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Concert reviews Music

The Sadies and Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet at the Garrison

THE SADIES and SHADOWY MEN ON A SHADOWY PLANET with TV FREAKS at the Garrison, Saturday, September 21. Rating: NNNN


Turns out the Sadies make a fine Alice Cooper cover band. One suspects, though, that they’d do a superb job of covering just about any band, given their first-class musicianship, brotherly synergy and good taste.

At the Garrison on Saturday, they played the Coop’s breakthrough 1971 album, Love It To Death, from front to back, with help from Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet (with whom Dallas Good now plays bass, though not in this incarnation). That meant two drum kits, one bass and three guitars – a whole lot of power.

Lead vocals alternated between Dallas and Travis Good, both wearing Vincent Furnier’s trademark eye makeup and sounding convincingly unhinged, particularly the ragged-voiced Travis. Hits like I’m Eighteen and Ballad Of Dwight Fry went over big with the sold-out crowd, especially the latter, which featured Shadowy Men drummer Don Pyle singing the verses in a straight jacket.

But the supergroup flourished just as much when embracing the album’s plentiful nuanced, psychedelic passages. There’s often a seriousness or stateliness to the Sadies, and this set exposed their more playful side while also getting us amped for their new album, Internal Sounds.

Earlier, local punk four-piece TV Freaks stuck with the night’s theme by doing a set of Misfits covers, infusing them with attitude and energy despite frustrating obstacles like the between-song music still playing through the P.A. during most of their set. (How rude!) They earned big-time cheers after ending with the Viletones’ Screaming Fist, which they originally learned for NOW’s 50:50 video series.

TV Freaks – Screaming Fist (Viletones) from NOW Magazine on Vimeo.

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