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What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to Love: Gene Loves Jezebel?<\/strong><\/p>\n Gene Loves Jezebel\/Albion\/ Dec. 10, 2005 What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worse than watching a has-been band mercilessly heap disrespect on loyal fans who turned out hoping to recapture the musical pleasure they expected, based on that band\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s past performance? You know what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worse? Fans who eat up that kind of abuse and who shower adoration on the very artists who abuse them. <\/p>\n Fragments of the 1980s semi-Goth trio (quartet? five piece?) band, Gene Loves Jezebel, has been making sporadic comebacks since the late 90s, and appeared at Albion\/Downtime (formerly The Batcave) on a Saturday night, this time reduced to a duo, consisting of one of the Aston brothers (who cares which one?) and a very young guitarist, obviously too young to have had any connection with the original, ever-changing ensemble.<\/p>\n Instead of treating the nearly packed house of nostalgia-seeking rockers to reasonable renditions of their well-liked hits, they mockingly performed vapid \u00e2\u20ac\u0153unplugged\u00e2\u20ac\u009d versions, with neither effort nor accomplishment. A certain level of skill was displayed by the recently-recruited acoustic guitarist, but Ashton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s singing was a disgraceful display of sarcastic talking, giggling, scornful falsetto, comical bellowing and flaunted inability to recall his lyrics. <\/p>\n When Ashton forgot his lyrics, he contemptuously allowed the pitifully loyal audience to sing in his stead. Only a small percentage of the set was recognizable to listeners who, like this reporter, had a casual knowledge of their four or so albums. Personally I would have preferred to have never heard such pathetically empty, flat versions of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Jealous\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Kiss of Life,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and may never be able to enjoy the recorded version of these and other of their songs in the future. In between songs Ashton grinningly mumbled a snide, unfunny narrative about a sex, crack and his mother. What could be worse?<\/p>\n This pathetic exhibition followed and contrasted with a fine performance by opening band Ninth House, which had earlier put on a supremely entertaining, totally virtuoso presentation, displaying tight mastery of both their own and cover material, as well as sincere commitment to and respect for their audience. In addition to their impressive original songs, they performed a crowd-pleasing, rocking version of the classic \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ghost Riders In The Sky,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that alone justified the price of admission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to Love: Gene Loves Jezebel? Gene Loves Jezebel\/Albion\/ Dec. 10, 2005 By Doktor John What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worse than watching a has-been band mercilessly heap disrespect on loyal fans who turned out hoping to recapture the musical pleasure they expected, based on that band\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s past performance? You know what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worse? Fans who eat up that kind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/doktorjohn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/doktorjohn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/doktorjohn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/doktorjohn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/doktorjohn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/doktorjohn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/doktorjohn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/doktorjohn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/doktorjohn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBy Doktor John<\/p>\n