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 Fuel's Brett Scallions performing aboard
the USS Intrepid, NYC, 8/3/01 more photos
Photo by Glyn Emmerson, © 2001 NY Rock
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Sam Adams provided the brewskys, Sabretts the hot dogs, the U.S.S. Intrepid the artillery, Fuel the fire, and Insolence the punch, in an evening of power riffs that had this NYC rock-n-rogue reporter ducking for cover. Fuel – currently on a night off from touring with Aerosmith – and Insolence rocked the boat with their melodies and thunder. Part of the Samuel Adams Summer Jam Concert Series, the party went down August 3, 2001, aboard the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier that was in service from 1943 to 1974 and saw action in WWII, Korea and Vietnam. It is now a museum currently docked on NYC's West Side. Tickets for the bash were given away exclusively on NYC's K-Rock radio station.
| |  Insolence guitarist Mike Rowan
USS Intrepid, 8/3/01
Photo by Glyn Emmerson
Photo © 2001 NY Rock
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Insolence opened the night with a funked-up assemblage of steely metal. You name it, they combined reggae, ska, hip hop and hardcore into one frenzied stew. The San Jose boys put all their angst into their big hit "Poison Well," a song which got me so fired up I went looking for some war machines to fly off the aircraft carrier.
Singers Mech 1 and Mark Herman blended a Rage Against the Machine attitude with a Toasters beat and a Peter Tosh fire. Meanwhile, Mike Rowan, who looked as if he came from Planet Ska, kept the band's terse mania in check with his pumping staccato-style guitar work.
Fuel's lead singer Brett Scallions arrived onstage looking mean and lean in lizard-skin pants and space-age shades. Scallions – who manages to mix the heroin-chic appeal of STP's Scott Weiland with the spirit of Cheap Trick's Robin Zander – took on the tune "Ozone" and immediately won over the crowd. Guitarist Carl Bell, providing the perfect foil to Scallions, showed off his three-chord chomp, complete with snarl and sneer.
 Fuel's Brett Scallions
USS Intrepid, NYC, 8/3/01
Photo by Glyn Emmerson
Photo © 2001 NY Rock
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The other half of the team, drummer Kevin Miller (who resembles the bare-breasted Bam Bam from the Flintstones) and bassist Jeff Abercrombie, laid down some solid lines, keeping the bottom heavy and grounded. On "Knives" from the band's latest Something Like Human, the rhythms cut through the humid air providing a nice complement to the boom and bombast of bass and drums. One could almost see the crunched distortion echo across the Hudson River.
"Untitled" started slow and built up to a grinding dirge of call and response riffs, eventually climaxing into a bad-ass bluesy guitar solo courtesy of Bell and his glittery silver Les Paul. Big hits "Shimmer" drove the crowd into the obligatory frenzy while "Hemorrhage (In My Hands)" provided the anthemic, handholding sing-a-long of the night.
With the help of a few beers, anything and everything was rocking: the bands, the boat, the crowd. All one can say is, thank you Sam Adams.
August 2001
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