Tesla 2/22/12

I'm willing to bet most of you are saying, "Who?"  Then I guess most of you weren't arguably lucky enough to have an older sibling that was a teenager during the heart of 80s hair metal.  I used to watch my brother play Van Halen's "Jump" on his keyboard when I was five and thought I was observing God, personified.  I only knew four songs that they played, and three of them were covers.  The opening song morphed into Grateful Dead's "Truckin'" and a few unrecognized tunes later, they pulled out Zeppelin's "Thank You."  The boys looked a little haggard after all these years and lead singer Jeff Keith's peculiar mannerisms made him seem pretty tweeked out, meth-mouth and all.  He has maintained his raspy voice and the other fellas can still pick with the best of them as they proved in this all acoustic show.  They started pretty slow but built a little steam later on after jamming on some older tunes.  The famous ballad "Love Song" closed out the main set and their popular cover of Five Man Electrical Band's "Signs" ended the night.  Musically, the band sounded pretty good, but guitarist Frank Hannon's between song banter seemed scripted, as if they said the same things every night on the tour.  He even briefly started a cheesy wave in the small venue.  How novel.  Bands from the Reagan era do draw some interesting crowds that make for stellar people-watching.  We repeatedly saw this one guy in an Aerosmith hockey jersey drunkenly wandering around looking to talk to whom ever would listen.  Never approached us, though, thank goodness.