Jagger-meister

Shattered and Little Big Wheel at The Lucky Dog
The last time I saw Little Big Wheel they opened for an amazing Frank Black at this same venue eight years ago. Since then the band has released the excellent Redwood CD, making it two of the best locally released albums to ever come out of the Worcester music scene.
When LBW hit the stage the first thing I noticed was only half the original members are still in the band. That only makes 'em a little Little Big Wheel doesn't it? What matters is singer-songwriter Jim Weeks is center stage. The band sounds fine, but I miss original guitarists Wes Burton's playing a bit. He was the Dan Murphy to Week's Pirner (a veiled Jagger -Richards reference). No offence to the other musicians, but maybe it's time to drop the Little Big Wheel moniker. We know who Weeks is by now and it's his songs we come to hear.

On with the show,
To celebrate the anniversary of the legendary Rolling Stones appearance at Sir Morgan's Cove (now Lucky Dog) tonight's main act is Shattered. The club originally booked legendary Rolling Stones clones The Blushing Brides but they had to cancel.
As the band took the stage I was trying to figure out who played who with no luck.
Then I saw the Jagger guy. Yes, he was definitely Jagger. Directly to his his left was a female singer (which Stone was she?).I figure her job is to make you not notice that the other guys don't look like Stones at all.

How you doing Wooster?

This guy had the accent and rooster dance down pretty well as they ripped into Monkey Man. The Keith guy had the right guitars and tunings all the way down, but he hardly looked the part with his leopard print shirt and his K-mart chain. That's okay cause the Jagger-esque voice and moves got all your attention. The between song patter made me wonder if he acted like this all the time. He'd be great at parties, for a while. They ran through all the hits (with a couple of surprises, like No Expectations) and the more you drank the more you thought they were the the real deal. Jagger-boy left the stage for a breather and the female singer took over for a capable version of Beast Of Burden (remember the Bette Midler video?), which looked better than it sounded, prompting one rowdy fella to holler "let the bitch sing!" upon the Mick's return. Encore time and Mick and K-mart Keith are playing the crowd with us regular folk and it's 1981 all over again, almost. Wonder what is was like to really be there.