Being a one man band is the moral equivalent of being a stand up comedian: you are playing without a safety net and if you fall, you crash and burn. David E. Beats doesn't come close. Indeed, he pulls off a stunt I have never seen before. After the penultimate song he claims his guitar has stopped working, picks up a cream colored guitar "I just bought this one" he says. Then he plays his blistering "Over Here" -a track from 2009 available from ITunes , with an unreal solo, all bottle neck… terrific. At the end of the song he smashes his brand new guitar to pieces.
Eh? The audience is quite literally stunned! And this is what you can do when you're a one man band, you can make a fake guitar and pretend to play it to your own back up tracks, then catches a crowd of people unaware and make em gasp.
But it isn't just his gamesmanship that'll make you gasp here. David is the best metal rock God cum rapper since Fuzzy G. he plays a m,mean guitar, and he is a concentrated figure centerstage. There are major tracks playing (and all of which is David's work) and he sings, sometimes along to his own voice, sometimes solo live, and plays along in time so much so it is hard to figure out where one begins and the other ends.
Like Fuzzy, David is best when he lets out his inner Hendrix, he has a a pop sensibility that works in tandem with his funk and rap sensibility and because he is by himself, he can follow where he leads it.
There is a new video out which I can't find again (!) but is in rotation as we speak at MTV UK and the set is professional and powerful.
Could he use a back up band? At some point it is inevitable. But if he had one he wouldn't be on stage signing splinters
