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CLASSIC FOOTAGE The Rescue Blues - Live At The Izod Center, New Jersey. 24th July 2010 BackstageAnnouncer: Your on in 5 minutes guys.
Zach: Well this is it, the debut of Rescue Blues.
Johnny: Nervous?
Zach: Just a bit.
Max: You guys will be fine, we’ve got the songs, we’ve just got to put on the best show ever.
Tom: You say that every time we’ve ever played together.
Max: Yeah, that’s the standard and we’ve got to clear that bar.
Announcer: 2 minutes left guys.
Max: You guys ready.
Johnny: Ready as I’ll ever be
Announcer: your on. Ladies and Gentlemen please welcome Zach, Max, Johnny and Tom, The Rescue Blues. (*Met with deafening cheers.)
Performance
The band makes their way out onto the stage at the Izod Center on a cold Jersey night, Luckily for us we’re now indoors, some people have waited outside the venue since 9:00am this morning. The venue is packed to the rafters and it’s a huge debut for this band, 20,000 screaming fans are crammed into the stadium.
It’s quite evident that the majority of the audience are here as Max Armstrong fans, we are after all in his New Jersey hometown, he’s considered as an icon in this state and the fans are screaming his name as he enters the stage with his new band The Rescue Blues, featuring Zach Taylor, Johnny Jacobs and Tom O’Brady. There’s three microphone stands on the stage and Max steps up to his mic and says “How’s everybody doing tonight, this is our first live show together and it’s been amazing to see all your faces here in front of us. Ladies and Gentlemen, on Bass and Vocals Zach Taylor, on Rhythm Guitar Johnny Jacobs and on drums hailing from just over the river in Manhattan, New York Tom O’Brady.”
Up steps Zach “Alright, we’re gonna play a couple of songs for you now, I hope you enjoy em.”
The band begin into Hold My Hand (I’ll Take You Home) one of the first songs they wrote together as a band. This song is sung by Max tonight and It was like fireworks going off when the band started the first song, both in sound and feeling. It’s a song which brings you back into mind of bands like The Beatles and The Kinks. Halfway through the song Max shouts, “Raise your arms, I wanna see you move.” It encourages the crowd to scream even louder to the point where it’s almost tough to hear the band.
Next up is a song evidently about war, it’s called Up In Smoke with lead vocals again by Max, with it’s lyrics, “When Your Fighting For You Life/When They’re Throwing Boulders/You Fighting With Pride/With Our Flag Upon Your Shoulder.” early on it seems that this band have a lot to say and it’s worth listening, certainly Max appears more political. It’s clear that this song is likely to be extremely popular for this band, they could build an album around this one song in particular.
The next song on the Setlist is a song called 22, sung by Zach Taylor and his breezy vocals are very reminiscent of Neil Young, He smiles and winks to members of the crowd throughout the song, it’s about getting older and not being happy about it. The crowd are bouncing around with such glee, it’s very unusual for a debut performance from a band who haven’t released anything yet.
For the next song Johnny Jacobs takes to the mic for Candlelight, His vocal style is similar to that of Born To Run era Bruce Springsteen, Jacobs is a person who has been playing average size venue’s for the past 4 years but hasn’t been interested in become a solo artists, It’s been said that the guy has rejected several attempts from Max to sign to Junction Records but Jacobs has declined, he’s not a huge limelight kinda guy, but he handles the pressure of taking lead vocals in front of 20,000 strong crowd.
For the next song all three take up the vocals duty, all singing together on their individual microphones, and singing altogether on the middle microphone, the song is called Faster Than The Setting Sun, If I thought it was loud before then I was wrong, when the four sang the chorus in union the whole stadium almost erupted, it was the kind of reaction you don’t get often.
After the song Max stops to chat to the fans, “We honestly didn’t have any idea that we were gonna sell as many tickets, and this, well it’s pretty unbelievable, I mean we’ve never all played together live before and this just blows my mind, I really appreciate all you guys and girls coming out tonight and we’re gonna try and give you the best fucking show you’ve ever seen.”
Next up is Max’s time to return to vocal duties, with a song which is heavily influenced by his hometown, it’s called Meadowlands, incidentally the stadium they’re playing tonight used to be called the Meadowlands Stadium before it’s name change to the Izod. Anyway back to the performance, the song was cheered all the way through but the cheers increased with the chorus, “I’m A Small Time Jersey Boy/I Had Hopes And Dreams All In My Hands/But I Gave Them Back To Return To The Meadowlands.”
He’s very supportive of his home state and that comes across tonight and the band moves from Meadowlands into a cover of Tom Waits epic, Jersey Girl which is followed by screams, looking around the people near me I realise that despite the high pitched screaming there isn’t a whole lot of teen girls at tonight’s gig, it’s generally 23 - 35 year old guys at the gig.
The band finish the song and head backstage, the screams and cheers increase and as the band return to the stage they continue to increase, Max, Johnny, Zach and Tom all stand on the centre of the stage together and take a bow before returning to their bases, Tom returns to the drums before giving a wave to the crowd and the three frontmen are standing back in their positions in front of their microphones, guitars in hand, except for Max who is sitting over at the Black piano at the left side of the stage, Zach and Johnny share vocals and both play guitar while Max plays the piano and provides backing vocals for it, which is unusual because that song is a song written by Max Armstrong for the 4th Street Band called Hallelujah Is A Word I Won’t Use.
They return to another Max Armstrong song, with his double song, What Do You Do When Your Dreams Come True/What Do You Do When They Don’t. originally recorded by The Junction. Max stays at the piano for it but he’s back on lead vocals, the childish screams return as it’s another song they’re actually familiar with.
After the song a bit of panic happens in the crowd as Max steps up from the piano and walks off the stage in the direction of the backstage area, Zach shouts in his mic, “Don’t worry, he’ll be back.”
Max then returns with a young female singer called, Cristina Lake, they return back to the stage together and the screams increase again, Zach and Cristina provide a duet, It’s not a song they wrote together but the two did work together on Cristina’s debut album.
Cristina waves at the crowd after the song, hugs each member of the band and blows a kiss to the audience as she exit’s the stage.
The three frontmen return to vocal duties, They all sing together on the final two songs of the night, A Whisper And A Prayer and the recent 4th Street Band single Janey, See The Light. Both of which are received spectacularly as have all of the songs tonight.
Now I can’t predict the future but I have an incline that this band could become absolutely huge, maybe overshadowing the 4th Street Band.
I’m not going to say a cliché line for the end of this review, I will say that it was a surprisingly amazing performance, I didn’t think it would be so good, but hopefully they will continue onwards and upwards.
Backstage
Sound Tech: Great show guys, you took the roof of the place.
Johnny: Thanks, It was pretty fucking incredible
Zach: Out of this world, I’ve never been a part of anything like this in my life
Tom: Same here man, and I’ve had some amazing tours with 4th Street Band
Max: Yeah, this could be the start of something amazing guys, we’ve got to eclipse this tomorrow night, though, we’ve gotta do something even more special.
Juliette: (*Walks over towards Max backstage and hugs him) You were amazing tonight, (*Looks at the other guys) You all were, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.SetlistHold My Hand (I’ll Take You Home)
Up In Smoke
22
Candlelight
Faster Than The Setting Sun
Meadowlands/Jersey Girl (Tom Waits Cover)
Hallelujah Is A Word I Won’t Use (4th Street Band Cover)
What Do You Do When Your Dreams Come True/What Do You Do When They Don’t (The Junction Cover)
Seven Years
A Whisper And A Prayer
Janey, See The Light (4th Street Band Cover) |
