Review of the 69 Cats’ Viper Room Appearance
A review of the 69 Cats’ April 21st appearance at the Viper Room in West Hollywood has been posted, it is written by Lizzie Rose and features photos by Lexa Vonn. You can read it in it’s entirety HERE.
69 Cats
The 69 Cats are a Los Angeles and Helsinki based Gothabilly band. The supergroup consists of Jyrki 69 of The 69 Eyes on vocals, Danny B. Harvey of Stray Cats and Head Cats on lead guitar, and Chopper Franklin of The Cramps on bass. Filling in on drums the night of their recent show was Todd T Burr. They returned to their Los Angeles home, The Viper Room for their very first full-set show. I had met and seen the trio onstage on their previous visit back in October 2013, when the band was just starting to fall into place, and I fell in love. Of course, I was not going to miss it this time, so I hopped on the first bus headed to Hollywood.
Why an 8-hour bus ride instead of a 1-hour flight? I’m a hopeless romantic in all aspects of life. Something about hopping on a bus for a show just excites me a little bit more. 8PM finally rolled around, so my friend and founder of The Plastics, Lexa Vonn and I headed on over to the venue. We got there just a few minutes before the boys hit the stage, so we headed backstage to say hello and only found the lead singer Jyrki 69 there preparing to go onstage. We let him do his thing and walked out after him to watch the show from the very beginning. The band got into their own covers of classics such as, Type O Negative’s “Black No.1,” True Blood’s version of “Bad Things,” The Doors’ “People Are Strange” and even a little dark rockabilly cover of Jyrki 69’s own song “Lost Boys.”
It was pretty amazing to listen to their covers. Even a little more interesting was listening to and watching Jyrki 69 sing and dance to Elvis’s “Heartbreak Hotel.” If you’re a longtime fan of The 69 Eyes like myself, you already know what I mean. The man’s voice is hauntingly similar to the King’s, only a tiny bit less sweet. And he’s definitely got moves like Elvis, so it caught me off guard for a moment; I could have sworn it was the King himself singing that song onstage. Finally, they closed the set with their own version of Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” which drove the whole venue wild.
Afterwards, the band allowed fans to enter their backstage dressing room for pictures and autographs. It was a really sweet thing to watch, as not many artists allow such a thing. The after party was held at the Sunset Strip’s world famous Rainbow Bar and Grill. There, fans were able to have a few drinks and converse with the boys. Again, I found that to be really humbling and sweet of them as not many artists do those kinds of things. I personally didn’t really get to spend time with them this time around as I had previously done last time they were in town. I thought the rest of the world deserved to know how sweet these men actually are offstage. Overall, it was a great show and a great night.
You can keep up with the band on their various sites:
