JACKPOT: Faster Pussycat’s Muscat teams with Keel for Las Vegas Hard Rock concert

Brent Muscat, Ron Keel & the Sin City Sinners in Las Vegas

 

 

JACKPOT: Faster Pussycat’s Muscat teams with Keel for Las Vegas Hard Rock concert

It’s Vegas or bust, as Metal Sludge’s Gerry Gittelson hits the road for Metal Sludge exclusive

By Gerry Gittelson

Metal Sludge contributor

LAS VEGAS – What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, particularly former Faster Pussycat guitarist Brent Muscat and Keel vocalist Ron Keel, both of whom have done a fine job of re-inventing themselves in Sin City.

Muscat, an utterly gifted performer and songwriter, is going strong with Sin City Sinners, rock’s last hurrah in the Nevada desert. Keel, who has earned fame as a country artist since putting to rest the criminally-underrated Keel, joined in with Muscat and his Sin City mates Monday in Las Vegas, playing a torrid set before a packed house at Hard Rock Café.

Metal Sludge simply had to be there for an exclusive, but we arrived a bit late after some confusion about which particular Hard Rock to find them – cost like $50 to drive around in a cab to three different spots – but the place was rockin’ when we finally got there.

        

                          Brent Muscat gives the crowd a little classic Faster Pussycat

Muscat was doing a fine job singing “Bathroom Wall” as we nudged our way up front, and a few moments later Keel jumped up and took lead on a blistering version of Zep’s “Whole Lotta Love” that shook the place so loudly that the prostitutes out front must have thought it was about them.

Keel continued on with “House of Pain” – Faster Pussycat’s signature song – and the Keel songs “Because The Night” and “Right to Rock.” Fucking amazing. Everyone was screaming out the shout chorus for “Right to Rock,” particularly my friend, Chris Lacey (ex-Guttersluts), who proved his usual wild and crazy self.

                          

                         Ron Keel channels his inner Robert Plant & sings some Zepplin,

Beers were two for one, and they were going down easy. The rest of the night was kind of a blur, so thank god I was taking notes while chatting backstage afterward with Mr. Keel himself.

“I’m not doing this for the money anymore. This is what I just love to do,” Keel said.

I wondered what it was like to sing “House of Pain,” a song so personal to Taime Downe, and Keel said he could actually relate rather well to the lyrics – not about having an absent father but being one.

“I have a son, and back in the 80s I wasn’t around as much I was wanted to be because I was doing all this,” Keel said.

And the ill-fated Fair Game, a project Keel fronted with four female backup musicians including Tommy Lee’s wild sister, Athena?

“I wanted to make history. No one had ever done anything like that before,” Keel said.

Didn’t work, but give the man points for trying.

I turned my head, and Muscat was all smiles and having the time of his life, consuming cocktails, signing autographs and generally being his rock-star self as if it was 1989 all over again.

As for sitting in with Keel, it’s truly living the life, Muscat said.

“He’s better than ever,” Muscat said, dead serious.

And so the evening took us into the Las Vegas morning, to the glitz and glamour, the after parties, the usual stuff you barely remember the next morning.

No need to gamble on this one. No need to pay for more chips. As Charlie Sheen would tell you himself: “Winning!”

Gerry Gittelson can be reached at gspot@metalsludge.tv

                

                                                    Ron Keel  & the Sin City Sinners!

           

                                   Gerry G gets aquainted with Cathy Alberts in Sin City!

      

                                   A band of Sinners strikes a pose in where else – Sin City!

 

 

Metal Sludge

Sin City Sludge