The last time the Twin Cities' nationally known tribute band Hairball went viral, it was for doing something rather hair-brained. This time it's for being hair-enflamed.
Music blogs are circulating a video clip of the costumed cover band's impressively unflappable frontman Bobby Jensen performing in Kiss garb with his heavily aerosoled hair on fire, after a loose-flying bit of pyro landed on his head mid-song. Jensen just kept performing "Detroit Rock City" until crew members came out and extinguished the head fire.
The footage – shot last year in Sioux City, where the band played again this past weekend – apparently even caught the attention of the guys Jensen was emulating, who will be back in the Twin Cities next Monday to play Xcel Energy Center.
"My friends in Kiss got a hold of me already, and asked me if I was alright," Jensen told Ultimate Classic Rock. "They saw the video, they said, 'Hey are you OK? [Bleep] man, you just stood there and kept on singing.'"
As was highlighted in our 2018 profile of the impressively hard-working Hairball, the veteran rockers enlist ample amounts of explosives and other fiery stage gadgets in their revue-like performances, which also includes homages to Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, Motley Crue, AC/DC and other spandex-clung acts of the '70s and '80s.
The band caught a bit of social-media hellfire when it well-intentionally added a Prince tribute to its act, but it ill-advisedly did so with stage makeup on co-vocalist Kris Vox that many deemed to amount to performing in blackface. That part of the act has since been removed.
It sounds like nothing will change following this latest flame-up, though. Look for the usual pyro-fueled spectacle when Hairball returns to Myth in Maplewood on March 28 and its many other upcoming shows -- albeit with a little less hair on its leader.
"I live an Evil Knievel kind of life, so if I'm on fire a little bit, I don't care, that's just part of the fun," Jensen also told Ultimate Classic Rock. "I knew I was on fire right away, and that wasn't a wig, that's my hair. It was really nice and foofy before the show, now I have a much better Alice Cooper cut."
