At last it has arrived, the melodic rock showcase of the year. A new festival, a new name, and hopefully the start of a long run of melodic AOR festivals under the Firefest banner.

Promoter Kieran Dargon (Emerald Productions) in conjunction with Bruce Mee and Fireworks Magazine have put together a line-up of superstars and future stars under one roof.

After the seemingly demise of the Z fests and the Gods festivals over the past couple of years, Emerald Productions have taken the bull by the horns and after an absence of two years, Bradford's Town and Country Club (formerly Pennington's), is once again the venue for some of the biggest names in the Melodic Rock to showcase material both old and new.

Pride

Opening up today's proceedings are Pride who were already playing on stage when I got into the venue, as the doors were a little over half an hour late opening.  Playing tracks from the band’s two studio albums and also featuring tracks off there soon to be released third album.

One change in the bands line up  since they played on this very stage at the Gods 2003 festival, is arrival of new second guitarist and backing vocalist Tony Marshall. 

The former Contagious/Vaughan guitarist seems to have given the band an added edge with his own inimitable style of guitar playing.

This mixed with Chris Green’s guitars and Matt Mitchell's vocals, will hopefully see the band progress to next level and become the saviours of the British Melodic Rock scene.

Only time will tell I guess so we'll just have to wait and see.  This band certainly gave it there all and then some and kick-started the day off to a fine start indeed.

House of Shakira

Next up are House of Shakira, who I was really looking forward to hearing play on the bigger stage after the magnificent set they performed at the pre-show party the night before.  I'd also been greatly impressed by them at their appearance at a previous Gods festival some years ago.

The band were joined on stage by their former vocalist Mikael Eriksson who sang backing vocals today, as new front man Andreas Eklund led the way to a very impressive performance by the band. 

Playing tracks from their back catalogue and their latest release ‘First Class’ on the bands new label Lion Music, who have also re-released the band debut album ‘Lint’ with Andreas on vocals.

It’s well worth getting a copy to compare the two vocalist styles. House of Shakira are a band that can go a long way with the right motivation behind them.

M.ill.ion

M.ill.ion are next to hit the stage and hit it they did, full throttle and all guns blazing. Opening up with 'Eyes of a King’ from their latest album 'Kingsize’, with bombastic keyboards and powerhouse guitars from 19 year old guitar virtuoso Jonas Hermanson, who has a big future ahead of him if today's performance is anything to go by.

Creating a sound that mixes the early Deep Purple keyboards with early Scorpions, this was the band that really got the day underway properly for me. With vocalist Ulrich Carlsson dominating the centre stage as if it was meant to be. Concentrating mainly on the new release there were a few older tracks included in the set. One of my favourites I'm glad to say was ‘I'm In Your Blood’. The crowd reaction to M.ill.ion sounded good enough from where I was standing to earn them another invite back to these shores.  Whether it be at another similar event, or touring on their own, we'll just have to wait and see. I for one will certainly be keeping a close eye out for these guys returning again.

Legs Diamond

Legs Diamond were described in the introduction by Dave Reynolds as "the most dangerous band in the world", although they were the oldest band on stage today, they certainly didn’t let that stop them showing the young pretenders out there how it’s done.

For a band that has been around in one form or another for the last 30 years, they all certainly seemed to enjoy playing together once more. It was also nice to see that Roger Romeo and Michael Prince haven’t lost any of their edge after all these years … Good Stuff.

Casanova

Germany’s Casanova have one of the highest pedigrees of any of the bands on today's bill, with Michael Voss being one of the most respected artists appearing here today.

In Casanova he has found a project that may have had a quiet spell over the past few years, but with interest from the Japanese market, the band have once again being thrown into the spotlight. With the release of their new album ‘Beauty Must Die’ last year a new spark has been ignited.

The band open up this afternoons section of the day with 'Talking About Love' and 'Hollywood Angels', followed by a quick thank you to everyone for their support, then it’s straight into 'Not Over You' and 'Ride With The Wings Of Freedom'. Then it was special guest time with the introduction of former MSG and current Statetrooper front man the one and only Gary Barden. Then it was time for something different, not a MSG track or a Statetrooper track, but a fine rendition of UFO's 'Doctor Doctor', which got the biggest cheer of the day so far from the crowd. This set from Casanova had to be one of the high points of the day so far for many.

Dare

Next up were Dare although the announcer inadvertently said that Pink Cream 69 were next. In hindsight might have been the better choice to follow Casanova as the crowd were just warming up. Although the easy on the ear tones of Darren Wharton and Co. were welcomed by 75% of the crowd, I'm afraid I was with the other 25%, being not the biggest fan of the band.

They just seemed a little too bland and safe for a mid order billing and seemed to kill the lively atmosphere that had been achieved by Casanova. Don’t get me wrong Dare weren’t bad, but the fact that Mr. Wharton is the only original member of the band left leaves me wondering if he is flogging a dead horse and holding on to past glories.

With a predictable setlist that included 'Stay With Me', 'Abandon', 'Storm Wind', and the Phil Lynott tribute 'King of Spades', not my cup of tea I'm afraid, but today I think I was in the minority.

Firehouse If 75% of the crowd had wanted to see Dare then 110% of them wanted to see Firehouse.  After their extremely successful tour with Vaughan last year, those of us who managed to see them knew exactly what a class act these guys are both on album and live.  In fact I dare say this band were the deciding factor to many of the punters here today on whether to come or not. Opening up the set with 'Down To Lovers Lane', this was soon followed by the classic 'All She Wrote', both of which had the crowd buzzing. With C J Snare in fine form and loving every crowd reaction.

Then it was time for something more recent with 'Crash' off the bands 'Primetime' album of last year, the set wouldn’t be complete without the classics 'Overnight Sensation', from the bands debut album, 'Love of a Lifetime', and one of my favourite Firehouse tracks 'Reach For The Sky'. Before finally finishing of a great set with 'Don't Treat Me Bad'.

The day was complete for me and the next band would find it hard to compete with this performance.

TNT

But if any band could follow Firehouse's performances then TNT were just the band to do it. With Tony Harnell at the helm steering the good ship TNT to these shores after an absence of some 18 years, not since they played the Marquee Club back in 1987 have they played together as TNT. Although Mr. Harnell has been over with Westworld in recent years, it’s the line-up tonight that a lot of people have been waiting for.

The only criticism I have is that the band not playing any sort of an encore. Whether this was down to a lack of time or whatever, but this resulted in the crowd booing, which was the only time that this happened throughout the day and was solely down to their disappointment at not being able to hear more by this band they’d enjoyed watching so much.

Soul Sirkus

It was now 12.50 am and I was starting to feel the rigors of the day starting to take its toll. After one of the longest delays of the day, over an hour later than billed, the biggest hyped band this year Soul Sirkus finally hit the stage. Sadly the performance didn’t live up to all the speculation. As they were so late going on stage many of the crowd had decided they weren’t worth the wait and the audience was now down to less than a 1/3rd that had witnessed both Firehouse and TNT.

Starting off so well with tracks from the excellent debut 'World Play', 'Highest Ground' and 'Superstition', and Soto's vocals just soared and I thought this is going to blow me away. With 'Friends to Lovers' quickly followed by 'Parallel Divide', and then 'My Sanctuary', we were even treated to 'Stand Up And Shout', a monster of a song from the movie Rock Star. The hype that had followed the band was all worth it up to that point, then the inevitable thing happened that you get when you have so many talented musicians on stage together, the showboating started. Firstly Neil Schon did his tribute to Hendrix by playing 'Voodoo Chile' that just seemed to go on for a dogs age.

Then it was the turn of Marco Mendoza to go on to do what can only be described as a R2 D2 impression with some clicks and whirls and a little scat-man solo that was lost on most of the remaining crowd. Then he did a Ted Nugent cover that wasn’t that bad, but for a band whose new album has 16 good tracks on it, I wonder how many they actually rehearsed for today's show.

While all this was going on Jeff Scott Soto had been off stage for something like 25 minutes easy. When he eventually returned it was his time to do his own solo spot with Seals 'Never Want To Survive', followed by a little Queen with 'Bohemian Rhapsody', and then into Princes 'Purple Rain'. All of which are good songs, but certainly not what I had come to hear here today from this supergroup band. This must have been the most talented cover band in rock history.

When they eventually got back to playing tracks off the new album I, and many others in the audience, had lost the will to live. The last track I heard was ' I Feel Alive', which was certainly ironic as it was far from what I was feeling at that moment in time.  I don’t know how the rest of the set went, but it was well after 2 am and all I wanted was to get back to my hotel and crash out.  It had been a long day, and the disappointment of the headline act wasn’t going to rest on my mind, as the whole day had been great up until that point.

I would like to hope that Emerald Productions, and Fireworks Magazine, get plenty of positive feedback from both the bands and the punters to make a go of this festival and bring it back next year.

I know some people were unsure about the ticket price and the line-up before the day, but having taken the chance and come along to check it out, all I can say is it was well worth the money and all but the headliners gave the punters what they wanted and a whole lot more. 

The great thing about this festivals is that it gives you a chance to hear music and see bands perform that you might not normally come into contact with.  As with previous festivals of this nature, we came away with a bulging bag of cd’s, a lot of happy memories, and a list of bands to watch out for in future should they tour.

Thanks Kieran, Bruce & everyone at Fireworks for making the festival today, and the pre-show party last night, such a joy to be a part of.  Keep up the good work and fingers crossed we’ll see you all at the next one!