Firehouse gig

After rocking a crowd of 42,000 a few days back in Shillong, an audience of just about 500 people at Tollygunge Club could have been a dampener for any lesser band. For a band that has been touring venues across the world for the past 18 years, like FireHouse, dampeners don’t really exist anymore. Thorough professionals, the foursome – frontman CJ Snare, Allen McKenzie on bass, Michael Foster on drums and the long-locked Chris Green as stand-in guitarist – came, played and pretty much floored those thronging the club lawn for a taste of vintage, straightforward southern California rock, with all the ballads in place.
Young guns Crystal Grass, which brought forth interesting new-age sounds, opened the concert organised by Littlei in association with t2. The bunch of Calcutta youngsters played a tight, all-original set of five songs, including its standout track Plasticine. While the crowd was patient with the opening act, glimpses of FireHouse members checking gear on stage helped raise the excitement quotient. When the band did land on stage, Tollygunge Club offered more than a warm welcome.
“Hey Calcutta, are you ready to rock?” was CJ’s question, and the answer that he and his mates in FireHouse received was explosive. Without much ado, the band launched into a rocker of an opener, Helpless, from its 1990 debut album, FireHouse. An interesting choice of opener, this, since Helpless closes the band’s eponymous debut. In any case, the effect of those thundering drums and wailing guitars was immediate: a sedentary audience was bang on its feet and crowding around the stage, clapping along with the rock crunch. A series of big hits followed, including the fast, driving, sassy Lover’s Lane and the four-on-the-floor singalong special All She Wrote. With the crowd now thronging the feet of the band, CJ and his men brought it down a little, talking about the “many beautiful ladies” in the audience. A dedication to the fairer sex was obvious after such proclamations, and Sleeping With You was the band’s choice. One ballad segued into another, as the piano intro to When I Look Into Your Eyes had teen girls in the front row – definitely born post 1990 – doing their teen girl shrieking and screaming. But that’s what FireHouse’s music is all about, so the band took it a notch up, thanks to drummer Michael Foster, with the anthemic Reach For The Sky and the high-energy blaster, You Are My Religion.
While the makeshift dance floor now saw some serious action and Devil’s Horns were the order of the evening, FireHouse launched into the track that they are probably best known for in these shores: the power ballad Love Of A Lifetime. The audience, magically enough, seemed to know every word of the track, and then some: it sang a full verse and chorus of the next huge hit, I Live My Life For You.
While talk about the “quality” and “musical maturity” of FireHouse’s brand of rock was on every critic’s lip in the run-up to the show, at the end of the day, the seriousness with which these guys take their art was best witnessed live. From the word go, the energy level did not dip till the very encore – which was the groovy Don’t Treat Me Bad – it was apparent that straightahead, no-frills hard rock a-la the Eighties is alive and doing very well. The ones that spurn it just got served some sour grapes.

Published in t2, The Telegraph, December 23, 2008