Skipper’s Smokehouse’s 28th anniversary weekend celebration wrapped Sunday (Sept. 28) with rousing sets by some of Tampa Bay’s top rock acts. Hat Trick Heroes’ skilled-beyond-their-years teenage members closed the evening with a performance that offered a proverbial rattling of the venue’s famed oaks. The power trio brought the audience to the lip of the stage with Santino Rumore’s (pictured) precision guitar attacks, older brother Michealangelo’s full-throttle vocals/propulsive bass work and Christian Peters’ no-quarter drum bashing. The tight threesome offered an unrelenting set marked by finely crafted, cock-strutting originals such as “Chasing My Tail” — which recently won the band a CL Best of the Bay for Best Hard Rock single. The band also delivered crushing covers of Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused” and The Doors’ “The End” before exiting the stage to boisterous cheers around 9:30. Michaelangelo’s cold kept him quiet in the hours leading up to his performance, but once on stage, the 18-year-old unleashed a rock ’n’ roar that made the young women huddled underneath him howl.
The Best of the Bay winner for Best New Band, Tailgunner Joe and the Earls of Slander, also proved grippingly potent with their expert blend of punk and roots rock — prompting one concertgoer to favorably compare the young local act to The Raconteurs. The Tampa-based quartet’s set largely consisted of cuts from their excellent, at times topical but never preachy, six-song EP The Red Scare, which in addition to smart originals includes a rollicking cover The Romantics’ 1979 smash “What I Like About You.” The audience ate it up in concert.
This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2008.