I Don't Know What Reunion I'm More Excited For...

Apparently I've reached that age where bands I once loved return to the scene after a lengthy absence. While I once viewed comebacks of aging rockers as cash-grabs deserving of pity and dismay I must admit that two upcoming shows have me intrigued and even a bit tingly.

April 28th brings Urge Overkill – or, simply, UO – to the Ottobar for the first time in many, many years. (I think they played the Hard Rock Cafe down by the Inner Harbor three, maybe four, years ago.) Though their rock star pose got a bit tiresome and 'Exit the Dragon' didn't end their major label stay on a high note, I'll go to my grave believing that 'Saturation' remains one of the great guitar rock classics of all-time. Unfairly lumped into a grunge scene they certainly didn't belong in, the album never received the support it needed but remains in heavy rotation on my iTunes.

I'm not sure what the band has been up to of late. Nash Kato released a solo LP that seemed to come and go without much attention, and there were always rumors about personal demons that haunted the band. But I still recall the first time I saw them when they blew the roof off Philly's Khyber Pass back when 'Supersonic Storybook' was just out and that night they made a fan for life.

On the flip side of UO's 70s schtick power trio coin sits Tesco Vee and the mighty Meatmen, authors of the brilliant 'War of the Superbikes'. A showman of the highest order, Vee not only fronted the Meatmen and Tesco Vee's Hate Police (whose t-shirt almost got my ass kicked in a South Jersey bar) but he also hosted the greatest show in the history of MTV, the totally ahead of its time punk-travel-food program 'Way USA' which lasted, um, two episodes. One of which MTV never aired.

Vee and his crew bring their act to the Ottobar on May 13.