Double Cross
Styx
Hammersmith Apollo (nee Odeon)
London
18 June 2005
The less said about Double Cross the better as they sucked in a major way. Their guitarist looked like Dr Liam Fox, they tried an Egyptian prog song which bombed and their lead singer forgot the words on at least one song. It might have been the heat or who they opened for but the less said about this lot the better. And we could have gotten guaranteed nice live act Hurricane Party..ugh.
Styx on the otherhand delivered a rather good if odd show. My gripes I will get short of right away. Besides the opening act (why?), the bloody ludicrous ticket price (um and the venue was not filled why?), and they 18 song medley which just got tedious and annoying, it was a jolly good gig. Well five covers was a bit much as well considering the wait until the band played the UK and their body of material. What was a bit frustrating was the fact that because of this medley we didn't get to hear a few solo songs from the various members. We got to see Chuck Panazzo, who is obviously in the throes of AIDS, but managed a few tracks for the ole fans, which was rather touching. We didn't have to suffer through Dennis DeYoung's "hits" and attitude...because Lawrence Gowan is a far better singer and keyboard player and DD has banned em from playing his stuff. Tommy Shaw and JY Young proved why their formula worked so well (and Dennis didn't) as it was a flowing gig with those two main features varying their tunes. It was a far rockier affair that some might have wished, not I of course, but Styx delivered a damn good show to a less than SRO audience in London town. In the end the gig was what you would expect from Styx, pomp hard rock at its best...now without the pretentious balladry forever sent to Vegas. Lets hope the next time they come to London, and they promised they would, the price would not be so insane and they would chose a better playlist.
Rating: 4/5
Article comments
1 - Derek Jacobs
In actual point of fact, Dennis DeYoung has not "banned" Styx from doing his songs, they still do some of them, including "Come Sail Away" and "The Grand Illusion". They CHOOSE not to do others, many of which were their biggest hits, instead offering up some cover tunes by other bands. It was my main gripe with the live show I saw a while back, that I had to sit through cover songs by a great band that had a ton of hit songs of its own that it refused to play. That made no sense to me.