Kickstart your summer with a free to download album, entitled “Push Kick Bravado”, from Sheffield band Silverjet! Head on over to http://pushkickbravado.com/ to download now!

Local heroes, Silverjet, are Sheffield’s finest band. They don’t get the credit they deserve. Sure, they have the comfortable option of supporting other, larger bands on their tours or playing decent hometown gigs, but their music should be entertaining a larger mass.

Tonight’s line-up is full of bands offering rock from the school of old and the crowd, small at number but gradually increasing as the night goes on, are eager for their next dose.

First up are a band called Suicide Tuesday, a name undoubtedly taken from the Gemini Five song of the same title, who promise to bring the older style of rock kicking and screaming into the new century. I don’t think they’d have to do much effort - plenty of bands in the past decade have already had that idea and others besides. But their songs are decent and they play them without a hitch, if a little predictable in the process.

Next up is Velvet Star, a band more in the punk vein. They are feisty and energetic. Quite refreshing after watching Suicide Tuesday. Their songs speak of the usual excesses of rock’n’roll with a rather punk arrogance but they’re good fun at the same time, singer Danny Jones accredits the aptly titled ‘Ego’ as being about him and who are we to argue? New guitar player Andy Mewse, who left tonight’s main band Silverjet a year ago, is fitting in well and leaving his mark with expert guitar riffs. All in all they put on a good show, gladly deviating away from the norms of so called ‘nu glam’. Others in the same vein should take note.

Now I could make an age-joke about New Generation Superstars, but I’ll leave that out for now. They speak of themselves as too punk for the rock crowd, and too rock for the punk crowd and to some extent I’d agree. They do do a rather good mix of the two though, sounding rather Wildhearts-y/Backyard Babies-y as they tear into their back catalogue aswell as delivering some songs from their upcoming album. They set the crowd going with favourites such as ‘Come Over’ and ‘Overload’ but they seem equally happy with the new offerings aswell. During new track ‘Guess What’ the crowd are invited to raise their middle fingers and shout along with the band, something tonight’s lot take to with gusto. Maybe that’s just what kind of people they are, maybe that’s just what the tutelage of a band like New Gen can bring out in you, who knows?

Last but not nearly least is Silverjet. Locally they are very popular, and why should they not be? They play to a comfortably-sized crowd tonight, in the Corporation’s smaller room. Like the bands onstage beore them, their brand of rock comes from the school of old but has their own take on the old standards. They are a bit bluesy, singing about love and the like but they have a bit of a kick aswell, quite a good combination. Who doesn’t like a good love song? Even the hardiest man covered in tattoos would be encouraged enough to sing along to the catchy melodies, I’m sure there were more than a few examples of this in tonight’s crowd. Plenty of singing along, mad dancing and even some questionable air guitaring maestros during crowd favourite ‘Crazy’. They also played a number of new songs such as ‘Red Alert’ and ‘Machine’, all a tantalizing taste of the forth coming album ‘Push Kick Bravado’ which we are reliably informed, by singer Dave Kerr, is available for free download online next month. Something you should definitely check out, and hell, it’s a free download, so what can you lose?

Silverjet are releasing a new album on 19th May, available for free download, click here for more information.
If you can’t wait until 19th May, check out their remaining tourdates here.

Lawra Martin
Photo by Becky Martin

The first band of the night were Against The Grain, added at short notice by the venue. Their songs were of a very modern hard rock variety and although they were enthusiastic and played well, they failed to win the majority of the audience over. I suppose they were quite an odd choice of an opener at a Dogs D’Amour gig!

Next up were Silverjet, a local and very popular band. And why shouldn’t they be so popular? They played for an hour or so of self-declared “sexy rock’n’roll”, including a few songs from their yet-to-be-released third album such as “Valentine”and “Top Side”. The new songs went down well alongside a bunch of crowd favourites (a lot of people there had obviously seen Silverjet live before - they play many gigs at the Corporation): “Crazy”, “Cold Love” and the ‘newly returned’ “Hell Yeah”. The highlight of their set was a cover of Billy Idol’s classic “Rebel Yell”which had the crowd lively and singing along. Any chance of that getting recorded I wonder? All in all, it was probably the best gig I’ve been lucky enough to see them play. Highly recommended, as Silverjet are consistently good and that’s pretty hard to find in a band these days! 

And onto The Dogs D’Amour. I have had mixed emotions about this show for weeks, some doubt over the use of the Dogs D’Amour moniker (is it just another Tyla and The Dogs situation?), but mostly excitement - Tyla hasn’t played around here in a couple of years. And then there’s the line-up. What a line-up. Dave Tregunna (of the legendary Lords of the New Church) on bass, Timo Kaltio (of Cheap and Nasty/Cherry Bombz/Transystem V and song writer of Izzy Stradlin) on lead guitars, Danny Fury (of The Lords of the New Church/Vain/Kill City Dragons) on drums, and Gary Pennick on additional guitars. The band kicked off the set with one of Tyla’s latest solo songs, “Supreme Creator”, full of energy and perhaps glad to play to such a sizeable crowd on this first night of the tour, Kaltio happily jumping around and pouting on his side of the stage.  

The set was a mixture of Dogs D’Amour classics and favourites with a good helping of Tyla’s solo work thrown in for good measure: plenty from 1988’s “In The Dynamite Jet Saloon” such as “How Come it Never Rains”, “Billy Two Rivers” and“Sometimes”; “Another Love Song” and “Story of Our Lives” were included from Tyla’s solo albums; and the setlist also featured some great singalongs like “Errol Flynn”, “How Do You Fall in Love Again?” and “Satellite Kid”, which all had the crowd belting out with the best of them.

Being the band’s first gig together, there was bound to be ‘hiccups’, and tonight there were plenty. Odd timing, makeshift guitar solos, riffs played in circles, vocals in choruses gone AWOL. Certain band members began to look concerned for someone, another looked just pure annoyed. Tyla left the stage with a mumbled “See you later - and we’ll play better next time” - maybe the most he’d said for an hour - taking his half pint of Jagermeister with him; rock’n’roll through and through, rolling with the punches. I wouldn’t let it put you off too much if you’re planning to see The Dogs D’Amour in the coming week or so, as they will have had more time to practise and hopefully iron out the creases (although at some points it was a wonder they’d even practised at all). Despite the ‘hiccups’ tonight, the band remained professional throughout and soldiered on, taking care to pay extra attention to each other so that they wouldn’t get lost again. You can’t deny them their professionalism, in this case.

Becky Martin