Thomas Nicholas Band - Viper Room - 08/11/12

Thomas Nicholas Band at The Viper Room
(Photo: Sareth Ney)

This was another show that my good friend Sareth was covering for The Examiner, which he kindly put us on the guest list for. Now I know everyone has seen American Pie and most will have seen the sequels too (I gave up at 3), but I never knew that "Kevin" had a band in real life. I used this gig as a chance to see inside the legendary Viper Room on Sunset. The club formerly owned by Johnny Depp and famous for the death of River Phoenix. It was a cool venue but not really much different to many of the smaller rock venues back in the UK. Maybe slightly less sticky under foot.

The first band we saw were The Railways who were a great little rock band. Their lead guitarist looked like someone had shoved a broom up his ass, but musically they were great. Hints of blues, masses of rock and some great vocals. They did a blues track to finish their set which I was most impressed with, but left me wondering why they bothered with the soft rock stuff when they were a pretty tight blues unit. 

After a short interval Thomas Nicholas Band came out to play. They were ok as a band. Middle of the road rock stuff. Their bassist was great, and cool as fuck. But they made a mistake trying to cover a Foo Fighters track (I forget which one), before which Thomas introduced himself as Dave Grohl,  and just made a hideous mess of it. If you can't do a cover-song justice, don't bother. Nicholas came across as a bit of a prick, but there are plenty of musicians who are pricks so I mustn't let that cloud my judgement. But it's telling that the best moment of the night was going to get an ice-cream cookie sandwich from the store next to the Viper Room. Damn that cookie sandwich was fine!

List of bands playing the show

Thomas Nicolas Band
(Photo by Sareth Ney)