steel panther live

This gig sold out so fast, the tickets all went before they were on sale, seriously. The air was blue as I spoke to Ticketmaster when the entire Steel Panther UK tour sold out in under three minutes and I needed block bookings for my birthday bash in Birmingham. Thankfully we managed to secure tickets to the London show too and watched as it was upgraded twice to a sold out Shepherds Bush Empire. Everyone and their dog wanted to be at this gig; the entire London rock scene were out in force. Journos, DJs, Promoters, Labels and a lot of grown men dressed in bad hair metal wigs and spandex pants making the whole thing very funny right from the start. Having seen them a few days earlier I was still in pain from the muscles I pulled laughing. Would it be as funny this time? Answer: Yes. Shooting down all the doubters that think they’re a parody band that will soon wear thin.

Despite the fact they look like they’re from an 80s time warp in spandex, headbands and long flowing locks as they enter the stage, if you didn’t know better during the first song you could be guilty of thinking this was a serious band. It’s immediately clear that they can play, sing and perform, as they launch into Eyes of a Panther, a very Van Halen-esque number. The synchronised jumping like Dave Lee Roth then kicks in and by the end of the song the place is falling around laughing as they go into a ridiculously long strung out rock ending, with them trying and failing several times to all jump off the drum riser at the same time.

And then the comedy begins in earnest. Let’s face it, they only have one album (they’ve been too busy with hot chicks to write more), so they need to fill big time. The banter and jokes start and the onstage squabbling ends with guitarist Satchel claiming to having f***ked singer Michael Starr’s mother. Cue bass player Lexxi Foxxx with the immortal line, “Hey Michael, you came out of your mom’s vagina, Satchel came in it”.

Ah, Lexxi Foxxx. The bass player that gets the fat chicks. Lexxi spends the entire show checking his hair and lip gloss in his hand mirror. The girls swoon.

The band go into the un-pc Asian Hooker, with its chopsticks sounding riff in the chorus, and then the equally offensive Fat Girl, singing lines like “I wanna prove you that my feelings are for real, so I’m gonna buy you a million Happy Meals”. When the whole crowd isn’t punching the air and singing along to the stupidly catchy chorus, they’re laughing and snorting at the daft and over the top lyrics. The comedy carries on during songs with Lexxi and Satchel fighting over mic stands and Starr pulling his back when doing some jumps at his age.

The rattle through Party All Day and the ballad Community Property, showing they’re just as talented at writing classic hair ballads… before having the whole place in hysterics with the killer line, “There ain't nothing that I wouldn't do, for you, my heart belongs to you, but my cock is community property .”

As well as the stand up comedy between songs, they also churn out a traditional section where each band member can be introduced and do their solo. And what a killer solo Satchel can do. He's a shit hot guitarist annd just when you thought it had all gone a little too amazing to be believed and your ear drums were going to burst with the high pitched widdly widdly, he brought it straight back round and Pantherised it by doing the most ridiculous frantic rock version of ‘Doe a Deer, a female Deer’!

The lovely Lexxi Foxxx stunned the crowd with a live hair solo. Words cannot begin to describe how moving it is to see this in the flesh, epically re-worked from the album version to succeed on stage in front of thousands of wide eyed fans looking on in awe as his locks flowed in the wind.

Girl from Oklahoma showed they’d done their homework as Starr explains girls from Oklahoma are like girls from Essex, and proceeds to sing about groupies; “What did you have to do for that backstage pass ‘cause I found a Poison laminate inside of your ass.”

They finished off the main set with the hit single, Death to All But Metal, with the whole venue singing along, and then the classic Turn Out the Lights, which is always my favourite. The line “Turn out the lights, before you suck my dick, someone beat you with an ugly stick“ is just never not funny.

Another plus point for Steel Panther is that they can cover just about any 80s rock song and do it perfectly, and you’re never quite sure what you get. Tonight London was treated to Van Halen’s Panama and Mötley Crüe’s Kickstart My Heart, complete with getting lots of ‘hot chicks’ up on stage to dance around with big grins on their faces.

The whole show was fun, pure entertainment from start to finish and performed by utterly accomplished musicians and top showmen, and a lot of sweaty spandex-clad rockers went home wiping the tears of laughter from their eyes but also secretly noting just what great musicians these guys are.

by Lynn Wyeth