No Offense Live Report (22/05/2009 @ Mike's Irish Bar)

Well, yes, in fact I managed to go! After around 5 Lives, I managed to go watch Flexxy and company on a humid Friday, finally! I had listened to No Offense's recorded live performances and yes, I thought they were pretty decent (it's a hesitation to say any more, that comes with any band doing covers), but now I have revised my opinion: they are good and not just "hey, they're my friends (well, Flexxy is) - they're OK". No, I mean actually, very pleasantly good.

They played a number of interesting covers, "Give It Away" (which always makes me appreciate Flexxy's voice range), "Unbelievable" AND Gazette's "Cockroach" among them and I believe the whole band is deserving of congratulations, for doing the songs justice. They also played two of their own songs, "A Fresh Start" and "One Step Forward", the first of which I liked very much, in and of itself, while the second brought to mind the music from the fictional band, Trip Cyclone, in the game "Shivers II" (one of the best soundtracks ever in a game, if you like classic rock).

At any rate, here's the photos from that night.

Presenting

No Offense

Vlassis "FlexXxible" Tsiamas
(Vocals)

Haris Pandazis
(Bass)


Panayiotis Kolidas
(Guitar)


Vassilis Nikolis
(Drums)


You know, I generally sort Flexxy under
"depressed", or at least, potentially so...

...but whenever he is on stage
(both when I saw them live and
in videos)...

...he seems to forget himself.

The whole band was perfectly focused...

...not only keeping their building momentum...


...but also augmenting it as they went.


As to the ever-fearful question: "were there
enough people?"...

...I believe this answers it (in part - there were
many more on the other side but taking
wide pictures is a pain in there).

Not to mention some familiar faces
(Velvet Vortex)...

...John and NickUnknown (back from Scotland
for Summer Break). There were also Raziel,
Luna (far left, here), Nickmer, Darkside_Blues
and Cavu (Ergo Proxy sleeped us off, yet
again).




"Give it away, give it away, give it away now...!"



I have a small obsession with
photographing drummers...

...because they invariably give me
a hard time (Chiroto has been
by far the worst).


After No Offense concluded, we ordered beers
and Kamikaze Cocktail, which...

...gave Darkside_Blues the
opportunity to test his...
suction skills (you had it
coming bro)!

I also took a couple of videos ("Cockroach" and "One Step Forward"), but they are huge and I have a hard time uploading them. However, I have given them to Flexxy, so he should get off his ass and upload them himself, yeah?! Well, at any rate, I want to congratulate the guys and thank Flexxy for dedicating "Unbelievable " to me. It did seem a bit weird to anyone who has not been exposed to the company's inside jokes but so long as I understood, alles ist OK.

For myself, I would like to hear more of No Offense's original songs (which, as they say in their page, they are currently working on), but a slight suspicion I have about their next covers (not telling), has me waiting for their coming live performances.

Before I go, here are a video featuring Trip Cyclone's (whom I mentioned earlier) "Was I Even There" and another featuring the remix from the Shivers I game music.





Strangely enough, both I found were edited with Kingdom Hearts footage.

Rock 'n' Roll Children,

Speedgrapher