We once loved the BellRays. But that was when they remembered how to rock. Photo: .
Itap always a sad moment, realizing a band’s creative death.
Itap one thing for a band to break up. But itap even worse when a group keeps going, even though they’ve said all they have to say, sung all they had to sing, played all they had to play.
I could go on and on in this space, talking about how outrageously underwhelming Thursday-night show at the was. But I won’t. If their latest CD, “Hard, Sweet and Sticky,” weren’t enough of a statement that the BellRays are now past their prime, the show was the dull and overwrought exclamation point that is the end of my relationship with the band.
They used to be great. People used to mistakenly claim them as Detroiters because their music was so fierce, their approach so visceral.
But now those same people are leaving in the middle of the set, saying that itap just not there for them anymore.
I stayed until the end on Thursday. I felt I owed them that. The new material was awful, disrespectful rehashes of the records that had come before them. “Blues For Godzilla” reminded me – and the few others still there – why we once loved this band from Riverside, Calif. But the rest of the set confirmed what I last thought upon seeing these guys.
What was once a hormonal garage rock group is now a mediocre bar band.
At least we still have “Meet the BellRays.”
Ricardo Baca is the pop music critic for The Denver Post.
