Love and Rockets – Palace Theater – St. Paul MN – June 5th 2023

First Avenue and the Palace Theater present Love & Rockets

I’ve only seen Love & Rockets in concert twice my entire life. The first time was many, many years ago at First Avenue which I don’t even remember anything about. The second time I saw them was a few days ago at the Palace Theater in St Paul (which, by the way, is getting to be one of my favorite venues to see a concert.) I didn’t know what to expect since I do not remember ANYTHING from the previous time I saw Love & Rockets. However, like the opening act (Vinasantos) said Love & Rockets is going to “melt your face off.” And the virtually did! It was amazing! I had very low expectations and had no idea what to expect but I was amazed by what I saw. It was a tour de force of guitars, light and attitude. The started off a slow song “I Feel Speed” and then straight to third gear with the song “No Big Deal” from their eponymous 4th album. The next song “Kundalini Express” was from their 2nd album “Express” which is a song I didn’t remember, but I assume i heard at their first concert I went to and it is a song about fictional train. Love & Rockets had a lot of very trippy acid colored visuals during the songs. The crowd was very loved every single minute of this guitar drenched concert and I did too. The band has only 3 members, but luckily all the original 3 were playing. Daniel Ash is the main vocalist and plays guitar, David J who also does vocals and bass guitar and Kevin Haskins who is the drummer.

The opening band ,Vinasantos, is a duo consisting of singer Vinsantos DeFonte and guitarist/vocalist Lady E (who were in a band together awhile back) were very unique and very cool. When Vinasantos was playing the synthesizer, it reminded me of the opening synth for the Love & Rockets song “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven”

Btw, a few years ago in Chicago, a friend of mine was selling his homemade zines at a comic show and the graphic novel duo Love & Rockets (the people who the band got their name from) were there doing drawings and signing autographs and I asked them about the band. And they said that the band used to give the graphic novel duo credit for their name, but for some reason they stopped doing that.  They didn’t care about getting money for using the name at all, but I think they were just hoping for acknowledgement in the linear notes of the Love & Rockets albums.

Review and photos by Todd Johnson