Pop Music Reviews : Sweet F.A. at Whisky: Retro Bar-Band Dream

Here we go again: hard rock ‘n’ roll by the kind of guys who would have been wearing Jack Daniels tank-tops 15 years ago, guys fully versed in the ways of the whammy bar, the sweaty chest and the double bass drum. Of course, they ask you how you’re doing, Los Angeles. Of course, their jeans are torn.

At the Whisky on Thursday, hot new MCA signing Sweet F.A. sang about bourbon and bimbos and the troubles of the road; the simon-pure brand of beer-soaked white-trash blues sounded like two out of three hard-rock bands did at the Starwood circa 1976, before Van Halen upped the odds.

This is the band every hard partier in your high school wanted to be in back then, except that Sweet F.A. is from Indianapolis, is named after a Sweet song, and has its publicity photos taken in cornfields instead of on rain-slicked asphalt. Unless they’re a lot cleverer than they seemed, they’re real rock ‘n’ roll, a retro Midwestern bar-band dream.