LIVE! : Love/Hate
by Trevor Portz
Staff Writer
June 4, 2011 at the Key Club in Hollywood, CA.
Twenty-plus years since the debut album, Blackout in the Red Room, stumbled its way onto the market, Love/Hate is still one of the most criminally underrated bands to come out of the 80s Sunset Strip scene. While they may not be a regularly functioning entity anymore (with vocalist Jizzy Pearl seemingly the only member still fully involved in the music world), every now and again they like to get together and do a few shows. This year’s first one-off was, fittingly, at the Key Club in Hollywood, with fellow “just missed it” rockers Little Caesar. If anything, this show only reinforced how huge both of these bands should have been.
In typical Key Club style, there were about a million opening bands spread between the upper and lower stages. Some were good, some were terrible. Almost all were forgettable. Oh well. There was one noteworthy set, however. Darren Housholder—Jon E. Love’s replacement for Love/Hate’s post-Sony album Let’s Rumble—performed a set of Hendrix and Led Zep covers. Also featuring former Great White/Quiet Riot bassist Sean McNabb, the trio of seasoned, professional musicians tore through Jimi’s catalog and showed the young ‘uns how it’s done. Housholder—notably sober and proud of it—reinforced why he was such a respected powerhouse back in the day. It was also great to see another wayward member of the Love/Hate family supporting his former bandmates.
Little Caesar delivered a set of blues-tinged hard rock and proved to be in fine form. Sure, they may look like a group of science teachers with a lot of tattoos, but they play like a band worthy of a Bob Rock-produced album (which they had). It’s just too bad it didn’t reach the heights of many of their contemporaries. Nevertheless, classics like “In Your Arms” and, as noted by vocalist Ron Young, their “greatest miss,” a cover of “Chain of Fools,” sounded strong and ageless.
Finally hitting the stage at 12:45, Love/Hate was finally ready to give the sizeable crowd what they were waiting for. Kicking off with an impromptu spastic dance by bassist Skid, the band did what they promised, and played the Blackout… record in its entirety. “Blackout…,” “Rock Queen,” “Tumbleweed,” “…Dope,” “Fuel to Run,” and “One More Round” exploded back to back. Before you knew it, the album was halfway over. The band sounded as tight (or perhaps tighter due to overall sobriety) as they ever have. Jizzy Pearl continued to defy the stereotype of aging screamers, hitting every note the way he did twenty years ago, not even forcing to band to tune down several steps. Skid was as goofy and hilarious to watch as ever, dancing around like an American Angus Young, and never missing a note. Jon E. Love tore up the fret board, and reminded everyone what a unique guitarist he is. Original drummer Joey Gold was notably absent, but their new drummer (whose name was lost amongst the cheering) did a spectacular job and fit in perfectly.
There’s honestly not much else to say. The only downside to the show? Only two encores—“Spinning Wheel,” the world’s heaviest stripper song, and “Wasted in America” from the album of the same name. The crowd was certainly not ready for things to end, as calls for “The Boozer,” “Superfragilistic” rang throughout. There even seemed vain hope for “Tinseltown,” the lone Blackout… b-side, but it was not meant to be.
The saddest thing about seeing such a great band still sound so good and put on such a great show is knowing they will likely never record together again. Sure, not all of the members are full-time musicians anymore, and maybe the record industry has crumbled into dust, but with iTunes and similar sites, maybe it is worth hoping for a few new songs from one of the Strip’s greatest rock treasures. But if not, at least the guys can manage to play every now and then. Let’s just hope then becomes now sooner than later.