Beautiful Creatures: A Surprise from the Vault – A 2003 Live Concert!
Beautiful Creatures: A Surprise from the Vault – A 2003 Live Concert!
Just under a month ago, fans of Behttps://junkyardrockstories.com/?s=beautiful+creaturesautiful Creatures, ourselves included, received hints that the band was preparing a surprise for the 20th anniversary of their debut album Beautiful Creatures. At that time, we shared the news and speculated, and now we are thrilled to announce that the wait is over—the surprise was actually a live concert recording!
Welcome to West Hollywood, CA, at the Key Club (formerly Gazzari’s) on Sunset Strip. The year is April 24, 2003, and one of the most promising rock bands of that moment is stepping onto the stage, kicking off their set with “Ride” from their self-titled debut album, released two years earlier under Warner Bros. Records.
The opening riffs, played by a then-unknown guitarist named DJ Ashba, ignite the crowd at Key Club. On one side, Anthony Focx, wielding a black Gibson, and on the other, Kenny Kweens on bass, complete the sonic attack, while drummer Glen Sobel lays down the powerful rhythm that will drive the night’s performance. As the frontman Joe Lesté, known from the L.A. funk-sleaze rock band Bang Tango, bursts onto the stage, an eruption of pure rock ‘n’ roll energy spreads through this legendary venue. The band delivers a powerhouse set featuring songs like “Step Back,” “Going Off,” “Wasted,” and “Blacklist.”
By this time, the Hollywood rock scene had changed significantly. The ‘90s had silenced the Sunset Strip, but the early 2000s signaled a new wave of hard rock. Gone were the excessive makeup, spandex, and flashy outfits—instead, dressed in a darker, more subdued style, the members of Beautiful Creatures unknowingly set new standards for classic hard rock.
During “Time And Time Again,” the band is joined onstage by Dizzy Reed, the only Guns N’ Roses member besides Axl Rose widely recognized at the time. He stays on for “New Orleans” before the band launches into their first major hit, “1 A.M.,” which even found success in the film industry. The rest of the setlist is packed with raw, relentless rock ‘n’ roll, capturing the essence of their debut album—tracks like “Kickin’ for Days,” “Wish,” “I Got It All,” and the frenzied closer, “Kickout.”
That, more or less, is how the concert report would have sounded if we had been on Sunset Strip that April night in 2003. Without a doubt, the afterparty would have taken place just twenty yards away at the legendary Rainbow Bar & Grill. Today, twenty years later, we can relive those moments and solidify the memories thanks to this concert recording, which the band has pulled from their “vault of forgotten treasures.”
In the years that followed, Beautiful Creatures never achieved massive success as a band, despite releasing another fantastic album, Deuce, in 2005. We’ve already covered that story in our article The Story Behind Beautiful Creatures, so we won’t go into detail here. However, the talent within this lineup speaks for itself:
- DJ Ashba later played with Sixx:A.M. and Guns N’ Roses
- Kenny Kweens joined L.A. Guns
- Anthony Focx became a successful producer
- Glen Sobel became Alice Cooper’s longtime drummer
- Joe Lesté continued with Bang Tango
Together, they were part of a new, resurrected wave of Hollywood hard rock, and alongside bands like Velvet Revolver and Buckcherry, they laid the foundations for modern hard rock in the early 21st century.
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