Concerts are slowly starting to happen across Europe, but I haven’t been graced by any yet. Not that I’d have missed this even if I had attended a gig every night for the past week – just wanted to let you know that there’s still no prediction of when this blog will be updated with real photos of recent shows.

Teaming up with Danny Wimmer like they did for their House Party, this time the performance assumed a documentary kind of layout, with them commenting each song, either regarding the lyrics or the context in which they were written. So you got to know funny facts like Charlie hanging out at the bar his older brother used to work at and hearing someone ordering “I need a pitcher of Bud Light and a Jäger bomb. I’m comin’ in hot!” and more serious stuff like “Rain” being about survival, about “trying to get away from hurt”. At the end of “Dead Bite” it was also revealed that the character with the same name, recently featured in the video for “Heart Of A Champion” and the bouncer at their House Party, is just the combination of all their masks – something they’ve wanted to do for a long time but been too lazy to do. No big mystery about it then.

Speaking of “Rain”, this was the first time HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD have ever performed it. It was included in an acoustic chapter of the set – with an orchestral string section and keyboards! – which they’ve always wanted to do, having grown up in the nineties and watching NIRVANA and ALICE IN CHAINS doing MTV Unplugged. J-Dog added that this made him feel like he really did it as a musician in a band.

They’ve played a couple of covers in this chapter, the first as a tribute to the late Nate Dogg in the form of Warren G.‘s “Regulate”. Not really an acoustic version, but it featured the string section, so… Now the second cover, CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL‘s “Have You Ever Seen The Rain”, that one touched me. Both covers were pretty loyal to the originals, they didn’t “undeaded” them, but while Warren G. – and hip hop/rap in general – has never said much to me, classic rock such CREEDENCE is part of my childhood. I’ve said it in previous HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD posts how it was Danny‘s voice that hooked me in this band in the first place, so listening to that voice singing such a classic as “Have You Ever Seen The Rain” it was just magical.

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The set list:

• Whatever It Takes
• Day Of The Dead
• Bad Moon
• Another Way Out
• Comin’ In Hot
• Undead (ft. Alex Varkatzas)
• Bullet (acoustic)
• Rain (acoustic)
• Been To Hell (acoustic)
• Regulate
• Hear Me Now (acoustic)
• Have You Ever Seen The Rain (acoustic)
• Dead Bite
• Gravity
• Levitate
• Coming Home
• Everywhere I Go