Raw Glory was formed in 2006 as a vehicle for the accomplished professional musicians, drummer Mick Underwood and guitarist
Cosmo (along with their ‘old bassist’ Johhny Heywood) to keep the rhythm rocking.
The combined talent and the significant antecedent histories of these three notable rockers (Cosmo and Mick were playing professionally back in the 1960s) together with their new bass player Andy Hodge and their flamboyant frontman Paul Manzi, easily earn them a place in the ‘Rock Royalty’ section of the lexicon of popular music With these credentials, they really should be sipping margueritas on a sunny tropical shore somewhere.
But it is not enough to rest on your laurels, especially if you wanna live a rock n ‘roll lifestyle to the extreme … these guys are still out working every week – making new music and recreating their old fire and magic at local venues around West London.
These guys still rock. They still perform out-and-out guts and glory assaults on the tender eardrums of unsuspecting punters any given Saturday night.
Big dirty tunes like ‘Bad Girl’ are overblown heavy metal anthems stylistically blasted through with bombastic beats and heavy riffs. These songs crash out of the Raw Glory speakers in waves and waves of sound, drowning the audience, and making ‘em gasp for air.
I am at that ‘dangerous age’. So, when I had my first “sound attack”, inflicted upon me by Raw Glory, I clutched my heaving chest. My arms went stiff like a starfish, but at the same time, my legs turned to jelly. Then my ears started to drum, hiss and crackle intermittently and, finally, a shooting star whooshed up the left side of my brain and fired out of my pineal gland like a flame blasting from a blow torch. I thought that I would never recover. Wow – this is potent stuff. If heavy metal was illegal then Raw Glory would be ‘class A’ – and this stuff they are still pedalling would be the equivalent of 100% pure Colombian.
The rest of the audience at Hard Rock Hell also suffered severe “Sound Attacks”. We even had a taste of the kinda magic that drummer Mick Underwood could still evoke on the skins. It seems unlikely that there was a better, faster, fatter performance on the drums over the entire three days of the festival. And guitarist Cosmo also cranked up the angst and let fly with furious laments, banshee cries, whispers, whelps and raining chords. It was all there in the sound attacks that he performed for the crowd at Prestatyn.
But it was the singer who stole the show from his distinguished colleagues and turned a modest pub sized gig into a major tour de force suitable for a stadium-sized sell-out. The tail of the peacock, the enlarged claw of a male fiddler crab and the overblown curly mop of hair upon the head of wild rock singer such as Paul Manzi or Robert Plant are all sure-fire signs of male virility. Here was an alpha-male strutting the territory of his stage in glorious dominance. The truest definition of all that is, and ever was, so macho. He said that he owed everything to Led Zep. And the band’s startling rendition of ‘Whole Lotta Love’, to round off their set, proved this to be true.
Like the rest of the eager audience I was swept away by the sheer vibrancy of the Raw Glory act – and my favourite number “White Lies” was still ringing in my ears several hours later. Raw Glory is the sum of all that is noble and strong in the world of heavy metal and rock n’ roll.
And they prove that you don’t have to be youthful to be vital.
I wish them many, many more years of rocking. Good Health!
© Neil_Mach
December 2009
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