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✔️ = Critic's Pick
✔️ Michael Schenker Fest Guitarist Michael Schenker rose to fame in the 1970s as the lead guitarist in his older brother’s band, Scorpions. German-born Schenker soon set off on a path of his own, making a string of popular hard-rock albums with UFO, and later with his own Michael Schenker Group. His bands would be characterized as much by personnel turnover as by Schenker’s brand of sizzling fretwork. But for his current tour, Michael Schenker is demonstrating that there’s no bad blood among his former vocalists: Three of his former lead singers – Gary Barden, Graham Bonnet and Robin McAuley – join current vocalist Doogie White in an all-star aggregation called Michael Schenker Fest. “There were no fences to mend,” Schenker told CL. He has decided now is the time to “perform my music with the people I wrote it with,” for both old and new fans. Read the rest of Bill Kopp’s interview with Schenker here. —Bill Kopp (The Ritz, Ybor City) INFO
MICHAEL SCHENKER FEST
Four singers, full potential — an interview
✔️ Thelma and the Sleaze w/The Craig Brown Band/Blonde Tongues A year after the band tore up The Hub, Nashville rock ‘n’ roll outfit Thelma and the Sleaze is returning to Tampa Bay and classing it up by heading to the record store. Don’t expect the girls to pull back on any of the grungy sexuality and scuzz on their special brand of Music City punk-rock, however, and don’t be surprised if you get a little Southern metal sludge in your eyes either, should you show up for this early-ish Seminole Heights show at Microgroove. It’s $7 at the door for the touring bands, kids. (Microgroove, Tampa) INFO
ALSO PLAYING
Melody Artisans of the Crooked Thumb – Waiting Songs (Crooked Thumb Brewery, Safety Harbor) INFO
Patel Conservatory Honors Recital (TECO Theater at David A. Straz Center For Performing Arts, Tampa) INFO
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 5, 2018.