Artist:  Get Vegas, The Wrecks & Princes Of Monte Carlo

Venue: The Georgian Theatre, Stockton

Date:  15 April 2006 

The sole intention of my visit to Stockton’s Georgian Theatre tonight was to check out young hopefuls Get Vegas, so what I’m going to do is start from the end and work my way backwards.

This three band gig was a bit of a mish mash of bands.  The main band of the night The Princes of Monte Carlo delivered so typical radio friendly rock, at times they reminded me a little of INXS, but without the Michael Hutchinson vocals. They are a local band and from the few people that came to see them they all seemed satisfied with the bands sound, although it was a little too safe for me.

They did have some good tunes and when the vocalist strapped on a guitar the sound was a lot more beefy and more to my liking. The set was only 40-45 minutes long and in that time they started to get my attention, but the lack of really big songs was a let down. The highlight of the set had to be the rockier of their songs ‘1969’, which was a pity because it was the last song and they'd only just started to get my full attention.

The second band on tonight’s bill was Belfast trio The Wrecks, who delivered a set of seminal punk influenced songs.

The band seemed a little worse for their travelling to and from gigs.  They had apparently been to Glasgow, then Leicester, and then Glasgow again before travelling down to Stockton for tonight’s show.  A little more thought should have gone into the tour management, but the old adage of a gigs a gig comes to mind.

Things didn’t get off to a great start as the bass player had to frantically change his bass half way through the first song.  But give him his due, he did it a breakneck speed and was soon back with the rest of the band.

Firstly the band seemed a little weary and probably weren’t at their best tonight and the vocals seemed a little hit and miss, but overall they did give it their all, no matter how shattered they were.

Songs of note had to be ‘Temporary Death’, ‘Last Chance’ and the set ender ‘Too Late’.  All in all not a bad set but they didn’t ignite my enthusiasm. 

Now to the opening act and the main reason for the trip, Get Vegas.  These are a band that I saw at this very same venue as part of another triple-header.

They impressed me so much at that gig I wanted to see if they could come up with the goods once more.  And what can I say these four young guys just rocked.  Sure at the start of the set they seemed a little tense, but they soon got into their groove.

Opening up with ‘Speed’ the band were as good if not better than the last time I saw them live.  The band was really tight on stage and just made it a pleasure to watch them perform with such ease.

The thing that really impresses me about the band is the lack of ego’s, on stage they play as a team and seemed to enjoy every minute of their all too short 30 min set.

The band continued to impress with ‘Train Blues’ another full on rock song, with the vocals of Jonny Cole sounding superb as always.

The intro into ‘Wanna Know’ showed what a powerhouse vocal talent Cole is as he yelled out at the start of the song.  But the band are a four piece and played as one unit with Ash Walker just ripping it up on the guitar and with such ease, it was a joy to watch him play, and the rhythm section of Adam Laing on bass and Martin Saint on drums were the glue that kept it all together.

Next up it was another song off the bands demo CD A Soundtrack To A Revolution  ‘Don’t Need Your Love’, which sounded great on the CD but was even better live. But it was ‘Break It Down’ that really impressed me live, with a opening drum solo led by Saint, the band let rip and brought the song to life on stage.

Then they slowed things down a little with ‘One More Time’, before really going for it on the last song ‘Hard Lovin’ with young Walker spewing out some great riffs on the guitar.

This was another very impressive performance by the band and after seeing them perform live twice now I can see them improving with every performance and going from strength to strength

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