From the reactions of their most critical fans in the room, you could sense that the band was really hitting on all cylinders that night. The Alice In Chains fans who had queued around the block hours before the show to secure a good spot were soon happy they’d done so, because the show was an exciting one to witness up close. I love the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen and all that, and saxophone has a place in rock and roll.” Its place in their set was integral, and the band concocted a killer sound on head-turners like “Hard to Look Away,” “Somebody Else” and the memorable “Red and White” from their new album, this year’s WP2. “The saxophone guy, I’m a big fan of his and I just think people need to hear him play. “It’s nice to hear someone else be inspired by a song and take the lead,” Angell told us after the show. And Walking Papers’ current lineup – with Benjamin Anderson on keys, Tristan Hart Pierce on guitar, Dan Spalding on bass, Will Andrews on drums, and Gregor Lothian on sax – deliver it with intoxicating synergy. While contributions from the likes of Mike McCready, Duff McKagan, and Barrett Martin have added to Walking Papers’ fast-growing fan base, their potent music stands alone as a reason to be obsessed. Frontman Jeff Angell’s strong songwriting and vocal skills were front and center as he set the scenes to their searing songs, his uniquely rugged and sinuous voice resounding in the rush of their impacts. The crowd was jumping hard even before the headliners appeared, thanks to an electrifying performance from fellow Seattle rockers Walking Papers. The night’s fiery, hit-filled performance had their passionate fans headbanging with nostalgic grins, gripping nearby strangers by the shoulders, and pounding the floorboards with gratitude. Reality was extremely easy to ignore as the venerated Seattle rockers produced an intensely rich and hard-hitting sound that engulfed you in its wake. During the satisfying night-two performance from Alice In Chains in NYC’s Hammerstein Ballroom on Tuesday night, there were fleeting moments when it seemed like reality was merely knocking on the door of your consciousness – not unlike that sensation when you realize you’re dreaming and decide not to wake up yet. And no band since has proven to have such a broad fan base or such far-reaching popularity, and it is impossible to hear any of the groups that followed them without detecting some sort of influence, whether it was musical or aesthetic.In the thick of it, the full-body effect really was like some kind of hypnosis. For the next 50-plus years, they continued to record and perform, and while their records weren't always blockbusters, they were never less than the most visible band of their era - certainly, none of their British peers continued to be as popular or productive as the Stones. Shortly after he was fired from the group, Jones was found dead in a swimming pool, while at a 1969 free concert at Altamont, a concertgoer was brutally killed during a Stones show. They had always flirted with the seedy side of rock & roll, but as the hippie dream began to break apart, they exposed and reveled in the new rock culture. After a brief dalliance with psychedelia, the Stones re-emerged in the late '60s as a jaded, blues-soaked hard rock quintet. Over the course of their career, the Stones never really abandoned blues, but as soon as they reached popularity in the U.K., they began experimenting musically, incorporating the British pop of contemporaries like the Beatles, the Kinks, and the Who into their sound. Backed by the strong yet subtly swinging rhythm section of bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts, the Stones became the breakout band of the British blues scene, eclipsing such contemporaries as the Animals and Them. With his preening machismo and latent maliciousness, Mick Jagger became the prototypical rock frontman, tempering his macho showmanship with a detached, campy irony while Keith Richards and Brian Jones wrote the blueprint for sinewy, interlocking rhythm guitars. As the self-consciously dangerous alternative to the bouncy Merseybeat of the Beatles in the British Invasion, the Stones had pioneered the gritty, hard-driving blues-based rock & roll that came to define hard rock. By the time the Rolling Stones began calling themselves the World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band in the late '60s, they had already staked out an impressive claim on the title.
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