Photos: Maggie Vaughn/Shepherd Express
With only a scant few exceptions, supergroups are often all but guaranteed to be disappointing, if not downright dismal. First off there’s the dubious assumption that they’ll somehow automatically be more than the sum of their usually past-their-prime parts, as if, already being successful musicians, they can just contrive inspiration and shared vision out of thin air. This tends to lead to inflated expectations from fans, and when you then factor in the big egos and big budgets involved, you have the recipe for a real train-wreck. Throw in a few other hallmarks of quality, like a famous actor dabbling in music and a shitload of nostalgia and you have… well, the Hollywood Vampires, a cringe-worthy new project brought to you by the unholy alliance of Alice Cooper, Joe Perry and Johnny Depp.
The band takes its name from a celebrity drinking club, presided over by Cooper during the 1970s, which counted the likes of John Lennon, Harry Nilsson and Keith Moon among its members. This little coterie of Sunset Strip alcoholics ostensibly inspired the concept behind the band as well, which is to pay tribute to (and totally not just cash in on) all of the hard-partying music world luminaries who lost their lives in the 1970s. Or maybe that is since the 1970s, because to be honest the whole thing’s pretty muddled, and wasn’t made any clearer by the video that introduced them here tonight, a sort of cross between a tacky funeral slideshow and a corny public-access horror program. It was kind of hilarious, and certainly did not bode well for what followed.
After getting the surprisingly large crowd going with their dumb theme song “Raise the Dead,” the trio, augmented by a couple guys from Stone Temple Pilots for good measure, mostly delivered 90 minutes of totally uninspired covers, channeling by rote such rock icons as Jimi Hendrix, T. Rex, The Doors, The Who, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, as well as picking over the fresher corpses of Lemmy and Bowie. Interspersed here and there were some boozy anecdotes, a couple Alice Cooper/Aerosmith hits and a mercifully small number of originals that included perhaps the most cliché blues tune ever (which is apparently just called “Blues”). Beyond the fleeting amusement of watching Captain Jack Sparrow desecrate some of your favorite songs, it was mostly just an embarrassing bore. Actually, make that a super embarrassing bore.
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