Hot Leg
Birmingham 02 Academy 2
By Ian Harvey

You can either laugh at Justin Hawkins or you can laugh with him but you certainly can’t ignore him.

The former Darkness frontman was back in Birmingham for the second time in a year last night, promoting his new band Hot Leg’s debut album, Red Light Fever.

See our gig photo gallery below

Greeting a sweaty Academy 2 with a cheeky “Hello Wembley!”, Hawkins led Hot Leg through 90-minutes of all out rockers, camp anthems and arm waving power-ballads as if the 70s and 80s had never been away. And there wasn’t a Darkness song in sight.

It’s easy to look only at the striped jeans, comical headbands, bleached hair and falsetto shrieks and overlook the fact that Hawkins has surrounded himself with a fine band.

They are growing in confidence too, running through the whole of the new album and beyond, with a generous helping of download-only tracks and yet to be released numbers, raprurously received by an audience ranging in age from seven to 71.

Hawkins as been to the very top of the rock ‘n’ roll rollercoaster and then dived to the bottom. Now, three years out of rehab, he’s back where he started with The Darkness, playing to small clubs but with a growing momentum.

Of course, not everyone “gets” Hawkins’ OTT eccentricity, but for those who do, the reality TV-bashing Ashamed, singalong You Can’t hurt Me Anymore and the rather rude stutter of Cocktails, proved the perfect tonic to credit crunch misery and a cold, wet night.

Returning for an encore in tennis whites, Hawkins eventually stripped off his top, sparking off a similar reaction from a few of the female fans down at the front.

Girls just wanna have fun . . . and so do Hot Leg.

* Support act The Crave opened the show with an energetic set of catchy rockers, featuring a guitarist who looks suspiciously like Russell Brand going undercover. They are a band to watch out for.

http://www.expressandstar.com

Set List –
Ashamed/I’ve Met Jesus/Trojan Guitar/Gay In The 80’s/Heroes/You Can’t Hurt Me Anymore/Chickens/Kissing In The Wind/Come Into My Arms/Dust In The Wind/All I Gotta Do/Prima Donna/Whichever Way You Wanna Give It/Cocktails.

Encore –
Theme From Hot Leg/Cupboard Love/Do It In The Dark.

After only hearing ‘Red Light Fever’ the previous day, the new material from Justin ‘Dave’ Hawkin’s post-The Darkness band ‘Hot Leg’ was well and truly fresh in my memory. 1st time I’ve witnessed this dude live in a few years, as I previously saw him in ’03 up another Sheffield venue with his former band.

Hot Leg are well and truly built around Justin’s musical style and vocal approach – pure flambouyant 80’s stadium rock with large vocals and supreme musicianship all round. The other members nearly giving Mr. Hawkin’s a run for his money in the fashion dept – although no-one can beat those awesome tiger-skin coloured tight jeans – or the nice array of tattoos come to think of it.

It’s a packed house in the small room of the Academy upstairs and I can personally see the ‘Leg filling the big room in time if this turn-out is anything to go by. The entire album was played tonight, much to the love from all of the fans. It seems they’ve took the new songs to their hearts already some were wailing along with the Rock God. Main highlights included the amazingly riffed ‘I’ve Met Jesus’; the out of this world Sparksy rocking ‘Chickens’ with those powerful trademark falsetto vocals in full pelt & the Status Quo like ‘Prima Donna’.

Rockers as well as ballads (like ‘Kissing in the Wind’) were delivered with plenty of applause from all and sundry. Asking if anyone was in love, Justin joked ‘that it don’t last’ – lol! If it was your birthday tonight you were guaranteed to be serenaded to by the band – as Alexis was and some other chick who they didn’t know the name of – wonder if they were trying it on? – haha.

The sound really was excellent – probably due to the low room and state of the art gear that was being used for tonight’s gig. The crowd were teased with the intro for ‘I believe in a thing called love’ with was greeted with a heer but they soon lulled out when that was all they got – haha – sick but funny joke.

We did get to hear songs that may be on the new ‘Hotleg’ album though which were as awesome as those numbers too with good examples being ‘Come Into My Arms’ & ‘Heroes’. It was funny when Justin said he’d just f*rt*d because he’d been at his parents for Sunday dinner – well even Rock Stars need to pass wind – lol!

‘So what do you want, more ballads or more rockers’. All wanted rockers but Justin said on the account that everyone danced – as if they wouldn’t. He wasn’t impressed that they had some sort of gig on in the big room as said “to turn the f*ck*r down” and I can’t blame him to be honest as it weren’t half booming through.

On one occasion towards the end of the gig he did the old Angus & Bon routine by coming out into the audience playing guitar on the guitar techs shoulders – which everyone loved in the room – with one girl placing her hand up the back of his t-shirt – damn groupies! lol. It’s all in the name of Rock ‘n’ Roll Baby !!

This was purely a brilliant show from a new brilliant band – can’t wait to see ’em again – get them to the Download Festival!!

10/10

By Glenn Milligan