BY PELLE GUNTHER “If I had a genie, all three of those wishes would be that tonight was THE BEST SHOW EVER,” Eric Nally, front man for Ohio’s Foxy Shazam, screamed into his mic before raging through their single song set and leaving the stage with a nice “Thank you for having us, we’re Foxy Shazam.” Although they were thankfully cheered back on for an hour long “encore”, even that single song wouldn’t have disappointed. With Nally’s mic stand tricks, and the band’s various acrobatics and stage antics the show was as much a theatrical act as a concert with unrivaled wild, raw energy all wrapped around surprisingly brilliant glam rock with an edge.
In a short conversation after the show with Schuyler White, Foxy’s wildly bearded pianist, he said after riding around in a smelly RV for most of a tour, getting on stage was the where they were finally able to release and have fun. Although, when I saw them once before, Eric Nally said he did the things he did because he wants attention. And, with a stage act like theirs its hard not to give it to them. Not once during the show could you look around stage to find only boring cliche rocker stances. In fact, it makes it just about impossible to choose a favorite moment.
Aside from Nally doing mic stand tricks, diving, dancing, leapfrogging the guitarist, drinking water from a fan’s shoe, and eating four lit cigarettes, the trumpet player threw his instrument wildly in the air to the songs, the pianist stamped the keyboard, played with his ass and any number of other body parts and the audience ate every move right up. But the best moment for me was definitely their final song. They chose to do an a capella version of “Evil Thoughts” as opposed to their usual freak out, in honor of the last show of their tour. Nally ended by saying that they’d already done an encore and not to ask for one, which made their exeunt after the first song come into sudden clarity.
The focus of the night was most definitely on Foxy. The fans were a sure gauge of that, at least half of them leaving before Free Energy’s set. Earlier when the opener’s tried to psych up the crowd for Foxy and Free Energy, the cheer for the headliners was feeble when compared with Foxy’s wild cheering. My feelings about Free Energy’s indie pop rock were similarly dismal. Not that they were bad, just that they were extremely unimpressive. While I was not a large fan originally, it was clear that whatever they even had in their album didn’t carry over well in a live performance. If they had been by themselves, my perception might have been less swayed, but after Foxy’s performance, they never stood a chance.