Boy, this is hard to write.
First, the good stuff: great sound, except for an annoying buzz emanating from one of their speakers. The individual musicians are very capable, and quite professional. They play very satisfying music for an audience that doesn't really care how good the band is, as long as their favorite classic tune gets played.
They feature two singers, one male, one female. They both have very good voices, especially the girl. The guy plays guitar, along with one other guy, and both play nice lead guitar. They have a keyboard player, who pretty much hides behind his stack of keyboards. No bass player, but the keyboard player emulates a bass guitar. It works, musically, but it looks weird.
Their songs are easy listening oldies, including "Knocking on Heaven's door" (Bob Dylan), "Rikki don't lose that number" (Steely Dan), "Drive my car" (Beatles), " Tin man" (America), and " (Is anybody going to) San Antone" (Charlie Pride).
So why don't I like them? They are pedestrian. Not cohesive. You don't hear any of the delightful fills you hear from great musicians. When you come right down to it, there just isn't much of an edge to them.
When one person is doing a solo, the rest of the band lays back. They don't stop playing. They just aren't very aggressive. I could swear I saw one of the guitar players raise his hand for permission to solo (JK).
This is a little bit hard to explain, but I can give examples: listen to Elvis' backup band in the 1970s. Listen to the Tonight Show band when they are going to the commercial, and the singer (Vicki Randle) is singing. Gosh, I even heard it from Daniela Romo's band (this is a great example, if you ever saw her live).
These are examples of musicians playing at least a somewhat similar style of music, but with some bite.
Hot Pursuit has two pretty good singers. It is hard to find voices like these two have, especially the girl singer. They have two guitars that play pretty good lead. Just not together. They don't do any dual leads with the keyboard player, either.
I really don't like saying such things about real musicians that have obviously been playing, individually, for a very long time. It probably wouldn't bother me if the band just flat-out sucked. If they couldn't play their instruments, I would just say that, and wish them future success.
Maybe they feel they have to play such well-known tunes without much deviation. I hope the other oldies bands don't play like this. If they do, I'm not going to review any more of them.
If you are looking for bias on my part, I should say that these are not terribly nice people. Also, while I like most music, I really don't like Steely Dan or America, and Hot Pursuit is really into that stuff.
As for the Cockpit Lounge: their canned music kicked in a couple of times when Hot Pursuit was playing. That wasn't cool. They have two mens rooms, which I really appreciated when waiting in line to pee at the Three-Legged Monkey two nights later. The people working there are pretty nice, and there are plenty of places to sit down. The crowd is 30s-40s.
- Charles Hurley