We’ve made the trek to Charlotte several times to visit the small venue known as Amos’ Southend. Situated just outside the downtown business district, Amos features bands from many different eras and spotlights local entertainment. We’ve been here 3 times to see Firehouse but this time around, we went down to see one of the “newer bands” called Pop Evil. We saw them open for 3 Doors Down in Roanoke a few years ago and were really impressed with their style, energy, and musical performance. These guys are modern rockers in every sense of the word and are starting to headline smaller arenas after having spent the last few years touring in support of other acts.
The show in Charlotte featured 4 bands in varying stages of their careers. Starting off the night was a band called Bad Seed Rising. This young band (by young I mean every member of the band is in their teens!) from Baltimore opened with a short set of about 6 songs. They have potential if the female lead singer figures out how to use her voice and doesn’t blow it out. She can sing but the song selection they have is pretty angry and her voice sounds strained all the time. The singer came over to see us after the show – she looks like she might be all of 17 – and sold us an autographed CD. It was really hard to turn down someone who is obviously working hard at doing what she loves.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVYRNgCKe0k]
Next up was Letters From The Fire out of San Francisco. They’ve had a couple of singles hit Octane Radio on Sirius XM and put on a really energetic set. I loved their tribute to the Beatles which showed that a song like Eleanor Rigby can still hold up. Here’s the video for their current single Zombies In The Sun:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXDPbXDipZg]
The third band of the night was New Medicine. These guys are a party band that should have some singles dropping on mainstream radio soon. They remind me of a mix between Theory of a Dead Man and The Beastie Boys. Although their set contained a lot of explicit lyrics, they are destined to become one of those bands that makes it into my “guilty pleasure” list.
One of my favorite songs of their set was this one called Rich Kids:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbZPopKniBI]
Pop Evil took the stage shortly after 10pm to a pretty amped up crowd. We know Charlotte has a noise curfew of midnight so we were really expecting these guys to bring on a nice long set of all their songs. Although the set they did perform was strong, energetic, and musically tight; we were sort of disappointed in that they played a rather short set that ended right around 11:15. Don’t get me wrong, the music they played was outstanding and they had the crowd singing along to every tune. The fact that they left Bosses Daughter off the set list just didn’t seem right. I’m interested to know how their shows in Europe pan out and hope to find they have a good sized following over there. These guys tour CONSTANTLY and make really good music. They’ve been big on rock radio and play their hearts out!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8A9J94UWI8]
All in all it was an excellent show and I really can’t complain. The tickets for this show were only $20 and I’d happily pay that much to see any one of these bands. Amos is hosting a lot of other bands in the near future and I have a feeling a trip to see Winger is in my future.