Leslie Michele Derrough

North Mississippi Allstars: Tipitina

How do you start off talking about a concert that was so amazingly out of this world, that there are no words to actually describe it? Maybe it was the big ole Super Moon that hung precariously close to the Big Easy that stirred up the soul-bending sounds that emanated through the walls of this favorite local music hang out. Maybe it pulled out something dangerously close to blues heaven that the people inside were simply overcome. Or maybe these three men are just that damn good.

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Blackberry Smoke: Hard Rock Live, Biloxi, MS, 3/11/11

Blackberry Smoke is a fun, full-of-enthusiasm southern rock band out of Atlanta, Georgia. They’ve been humping the venues big and small for the past ten years and have built up quite a faithful following. They rock out and electrify audiences with a style that is infectious and boogie-woogie satisfying. But on this night, the tempo changed. Deciding to go on with the show they walked out on stage with the bare minimum of instruments and announced to the crowd that “it’s good from time to time to play the songs like they were written”; and then proceeded into acoustic versions of some of their most popular tunes.

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Stone Temple Pilots: Hard Rock Live, Biloxi, MS, 2/20/11

When notorious front man Scott Weiland sang, “Pleased to meet you, nice to know me. What’s the message? Will ya show me?” near the end of their set in Biloxi, Mississippi, you knew you had just been eaten alive by a band that had been dead only a few years back

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The Pink Floyd Experience: Hard Rock Live, Biloxi, MS, 2/12/11

It is not easy being Pink Floyd. David Gilmour is a guitarist of unequaled expertise and trying to duplicate intricate machinations with the fingers is not to be taken lightly. You have to feel the music to be the music. And the Pink Floyd Experience has done a spritely job of weaving you into its British hallucinogenic lair … for a few hours, at least.

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Cage The Elephant- Unrestrained Mayhem

They have one of those names that makes you wonder what the heck they were thinking when they chose it but in actuality it fits them very well. The catchy jittery unrestrained songs that come from a happy jittery unrestrained singer that you can’t seem to well…. “cage."

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Hinder/My Darkest Days: Hard Rock Live, Biloxi, MS 1/22/11

Fresh out on the road to promote their new album All American Nightmare, Hinder lit a fuse under the crowd in Biloxi right from the beginning with the opening track, “2 Sides Of Me”, followed by “Up All Night”, “Use Me” and one of Austin’s current favorites to sing live, “What Ya Gonna Do”. “It’s one of my favorites on the record,” Austin told me a week later, calling from a freezing cold Providence, Rhode Island. “Its fun to see a lot of people singing that song that is not out yet.”

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Ozzy Osbourne/Slash: Toyota Center, Houston, TX, 1/18/11

Say what you will about the prince of darkness, but the man knows how to put on a show, to get and most importantly KEEP the crowd involved. It is an experience. Yes, it may primarily be the same show he did last year but for the approximately two hours that Ozzy is on the stage, you sweat, you wave your hands, you clap, you sing, you hear the f-bomb a million times and you scream.

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Devon Allman

It may have been a cold night on the streets of New Orleans but inside the legendary Howlin’ Wolf, it was hot with the sounds of the soulful rocking of Devon Allman’s Honeytribe. Traveling approximately twenty-two hours just to rock Louisiana, you couldn’t tell that these guys were actually on the verge of exhaustion. Playing with an uninhibited fire, this is what rock & roll is all about. If this band didn’t cause a jolt of energy in your bones, you weren’t listening.

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The Voice Of A Dead Confederate: An Interview With Hardy Morris

If you think you have heard their name before it’s probably because you have. With their 2008 full-length debut WRECKING BALL, they gained some noteworthy success with the song “The Rat”. Following that up with a moodily engaging opus called SUGAR, The Confederate has come back with more songs about not-so-happy things. Their goal is to make meaningful music that pleases not only their fans, but themselves as well.

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