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Squirrel Nut Zippers From the scalpers outside selling $20 tickets to the mixed crowd of flapper fifteen-year-olds, zoot-suited oldsters, and jean-clad music industry employees, Irving Plaza vibrated with good feelin's. North Carolina's Squirrel Nut Zippers have a reputation for happy, high energy shows, and they came through again at Monday night's sold out engagement. James "Jimbo" Mathus (vocals, guitar, trombone) popped the cork with "Good Enough for Granddad." Putting the song's lyrics on the line, the group joyously proclaimed, "If it's -- [the blues, jazz, ragtime, calypso, and '20s-'30s swing hybrid that the Zippers play] -- good enough for Granddad, it's good enough for me." Attired in leisure suits and lavender satin, the band painted a gone-but-not-forgotten era of speakeasy martinis and backroom blues with '90s style on their very first note, and moved into full effect when Katharine Whalen (vocals, banjo) ardently whispered the words to "Club Limbo." The Zippers continued to warm up the night with songs off their second release, Hot. Reportedly ill that evening, Miss Whalen's much-touted voice held up well. But far more exciting were those moments during songs such as "Memphis Exorcism" and "The Interlocutor" when Tom Maxwell (vocals, guitar, baritone sax and clarinet) and Mathus took over the singing and were in perfect synch -- trading instruments and swing-dancing onstage. Mathus' chronic gyrations pumped out a backbeat that got the crowd to nod-dance, tap their feet, and even step out to the Charleston (where room could be found at the cramped club). The feel-good vibes continued to rise through the set's finale, when Maxwell and Mathus turned on the full-volume gyration for the very catchy spook tune, "La Grippe." They followed with their new Dixieland house of ill fame number, "Hotel Paradise," and concluded with a rip-roaring version of "Hell," the group's current college radio hit. The Squirrel Nut Zippers were back again after a perfunctory minute. Maxwell declared, "This is the punk rock of the '30s," before the band launched into a sustained three-song encore. The spasmodic succession of tunes off The Inevitable and Hot started with a drunken version of the bawdy swing number, "Plenty More," sashayed into "I've Found a New Baby," and finished off with those words that echo true in any era-- "Just when you think the party's starting, its over." -- Fawn Schuessler
Britney Spears Britney! Spears was happy. She said so. "Oh Seattle, I'm so happy to be here. This is the first concert tour of my very own. Are you ready to party!" The capacity crowd, mostly prepubescent girls, screamed a resounding "Yes!" in that ice pick piercing way only young girls can. Britney! flashed her blinding pearly whites and poured herself into the effervescent "Soda Pop." Most of the audience was seeing the first concert of their very own. They will compare all future rock shows to this: their First Time. But Spears' All Singing, All Dancing performance had more to do with an old style Las Vegas revue than a true rock concert. It was the former Mousketeer doing Madonna doing Ann-Margret doing the Muppets. Still, for the most part it worked. Given the median age of an audience weaned on television and video games, it was exactly the kind of bright, flashy, catchy, short attention span fulfilling entertainment needed to get a young audience worked up and gushing all the way to the merchandise counter. Spears, at 17, is a seasoned pro. Her hour-long set kicked off with a brief routine by her four boy -- and I do mean boy - dancers, which finished with them sitting at school desks answering to roll call. "Britney? Britney?" repeated the disembodied voice. Where's that Britney? Suddenly the star, considerably more "filled out" than she was for her Rolling Stone cover three months ago, appeared on the stage's second tier. Strike a Pose and let the bedlam begin. Flanked by a five-piece band, two back-up singers who embodied the image of "regular girls," and two additional girl dancers, she vamped a little ". . .Baby One More Time" as she descended the staircase and then ripped into an even more energetic "(You Drive Me) Crazy." "Soda Pop" followed. The set momentarily slowed with "Born To Make You Happy," which she sang to a boy pulled from the audience. A brief Charo-like Latin section was interjected in the middle just in case anyone was losing interest. And curiously, during the slow numbers the audience interest did wane. When Britney! -- while introducing "From the Bottom of My Broken Heart" -- asked if anyone had ever been in love, half the audience became uncertain. Love? And when she tried to express how much doing the Journey soul-stirrer "Open Arms" signified her embracing the audience, the audience used the quiet to hear themselves scream. The somewhat salacious medley that included Madonna's "Material Girl" and Janet Jackson's "Nasty" and the massive production number for "The Beat Goes On" received a far more satisfactory, if Pavlovian, response. It was telling that the musician that received the loudest accolades after Britney! was the drummer and his brief solo. Kids may know nothing from a flashy keyboard solo, but they get the drums. Dressed in a sequin-studded school girl skirt and black thigh high stockings, Britney! finished the hour long set with a fully fleshed, mind exploding reprise of "…Baby One More Time." She was barely off the stage as the kids, many led by moms and dads, streamed out. On the streets outside a knot of SUVs made their way to the freeways for the 'burbs, with changed children screaming at one another from their respective backseats, still continuing to exuberantly share this special communal event. Few First Times will ever be that good again.
-- Tom Phalen
LIMP BIZKIT/KID ROCK/STAIN'D One day before Woodstock '99, something far more crucial to the future of American guitar rock went down in a midtown Manhattan hall. For the first time, the Don Daddas of knucklehead rock (Limp Bizkit was celebrating two weeks at #1) were back-to-back, live and direct in front of 3,000 pumped-up fans. Midway through opening band Stain'd's third song (a nasty Nirvana-esque headbang), the rammed floor morphed into a body-surfing mosh pit. Although the rest of the band's set was marred by a wack house mix, 'nuff-'nuff full metal jacket punk energy came across to rock the house. Intermission, lights up, crowd-watching time. The usual 18-24 suburban t-shirt/cargo shorts-wearing white males were representin' of course, but this wasn't no ill frat boy party. The presence of a lot of single/attached ladies, blacks, Latinos, Asians, skate kids, 30-something metalheads in the house and in the pit took the edge off any potential testosterone-overspills. It was a convivial, flirting-posing-friends-clustering old-style high school summer concert party vibe happenin'. Good move, since the next two hours promised to be way out of bounds. And it would be... kinda-sorta. Kid Rock's set exploded with a P-Funk crunchy-Keith Moon nutty hyperventilation of "Devil Without a Cause." From that point it was Def Con Level Five -- KR prowling the stage like LL Cool J, spitting verbal body counts like Ice T, whipping blonde mane like a heavy metal god, bal'headed XXX-rapping midget ("with a 10-foot d**k") in an electric-blue Dodgers jersey, Twisted Brown Trucker Band (bass, drums, keyboards, guitar, DJ) cold-rocking AC/DC power riffs and Old Skool breakbeats. It was pandemonium -- dizzy rushes of "Welcome 2 the Party," "I Am the Bullgod," Wasting Time," "Where You at Rock," a giant plastic Wild Irish Rose bottle flying through the air, surfers doing mad somersaults and back flips. A country guitar booglarization of "Cowboy" followed by Rock taking jive solos on every instrument damn near stopped the party. A cranked blast of "F**k Off" restored disorder. With a shout of "I am the King of Rock, there is no higher", KR brought on Run-DMC and Jam Master Jay. Sh** went off the hook as Old School and New School cold-wrecked "King of Rock" and "Bawitdaba" to da end. Tough act to follow. With a fusillade of drum 'n' guitar, the scrim dropped to reveal Limp Bizkit spread out in front of a tenement building (DJ on roof, rotating blue searchlights at each end). Opening with a short sharp jab of "Just Like This," the crew waded in like Joe Frazier throwing combination body shots ("9 Teen 90 Nine"-"Counterfeit"-"A Lesson Learned"; "I'm Broke"-"Don't Go Off Wandering"-"Stalemate") while mic-in-hand, Fred Durst ran up to the front of the balcony and screamed, "If you see one person in the house who ain't movin' his ass, you move his ass!" Right then the balcony started to bounce and the moshers went mental. Next thing ya know, Durst is standing on top of the mixing boards kicking off "Show Me What You Got" with "Can I see some t*ts?" Bad move. Those four words took the edge off. In spite of all the Metallica quotes, punk thrashing, DJ turntabalistics, crowd-rousing rants that followed, Limp Bizkit's gig was up. Emptying a water bottle on a few lucky moshers, Durst shook his head and laughed, "I can't save the world." Nonetheless, if the United Knucklehead Nation has its way, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, and Stain'd just might save rock'n'roll.
-- Tom Terrell
Lilith Fair Hairy armpits. Toe rings. Henna tattoos. Sarah McLachlan. Yes, Lilith Fair, the all-girl concert festival, is still about all these things. This year's Jones Beach Lilith-goers sported quite a few hairy pits; toe, nose, belly, tongue... damn near any orifice rings; tattoos; and, at times, guys on their arms, all united in a quest for good music - which they found there in almost embarrassing abundance. But even more than great music, Lilith is about innocence. McLachlan herself reminds us that "we are still innocent," and Lilith -- named after Adam's first wife, the precursor to Eve -- is a fitting return to primal, pre-apple innocence, conjuring images of when it was still okay to run around barefoot, don temporary Cracker Jack box tattoos, and kiss girls on the mouth proudly and publicly, as several Lilith-goers did. This sonic circus, the last hurrah of its three-year run, boasted three stages and "lilithic" vendors and booths. So what's "lilithic?" It is a penchant for understated hokey-ness, a bohemianism still safely circumscribed in suburbia, a continuing fumbling towards self, and all of the attending symbols. To explain: macramé tank tops are lilithic. Patent leather hot pants are not. Wire jewelry is lilithic. Thirty inch platinum chains are not lilithic. Understand? The booths were blatantly lilithic, from a womyn's bookstore called Literary Lilith to a vendor of burlap tampon holders. Even Tower Records, typically a democratic repository of all genres, succumbed to lilithic forces by stocking its Lilith Fair booth with not only CDs by all-female artists, but CDs by only lilithic female artists. Vonda Shepard is lilithic, Lil' Kim is not. Pretty soon, lilithic started feeling monolithic. Thankfully, the performances were far more varied and genuine. The lesser-known acts on the supporting stages were surprisingly refreshing: Amy Fairchild's arresting alto charmed the crowd; Bertine breezed through techno-savvy groove music; former Veruca Salt singer Nina Gordon plucked heartstrings with soul searching songs; Dance Hall Crashers ignited the stage with goo-gads of gutsy energy; and the Titian Kendall Payne's cantos of finding purpose revealed her future star. Melrose Place compilation musician Aimee Mann, who closed the off-stage performances, was the first of two artists to fail the live voice test. Remember her as the strong-voiced upstart who led 'Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry?" Well, this time, her voice hardly carried. Though Mann's backup music was beautifully written (albeit low budget - only a guitar player and, at one time, a recorded track backed her), Mann's singing was an afterthought. Opening the main stage, bassist Me'Shell Ndegeocello performed like a quintessential artiste, completely immersed in her craft, leading her band in funky instrumental improvs of breathy tunes from her new album Bitter (oddly, she didn't perform any songs from her Grammy-nominated debut). And in true artiste form, Ndegeocello barely engaged the crowd and played with an almost Miles Davis-esque brand of back-to-the-crowd self-absorption. After Sandra Bernhard kicked some hilarious music-related jokes, Mya danced through her set Janet Jackson-style with snazzy moves and whisper-soft vocals that rarely rose above audible decibel levels. But Chrissie Hynde was the first real star to perform at Lilith Fair - and one of only two. And just if you didn't believe that she and her band are celestial, the Pretenders opened with "Popstar," from their new album Viva El Amor. Sprinkling new tracks like "Human" between their standards like "Don't Get Me Wrong" and "I'll Stand By You," the Pretenders proved as fresh today as in 1979. Hynde, apparently determined to make everyone forget that she's hit the half-century mark, performed with adolescent energy and buoyancy, culminating in her strutting through the mega-hit "Brass In Pocket." Lilith took a slight dip when Sheryl Crow took stage. Crow lacked intense, infectious stage presence, that je ne sais quoi of veteran star performers, but her songs are so good and sing-a-longish that the crowd, at times, barely heard or noticed her. She ably belted her ol' reliable hits like "My Favorite Mistake" and joined Hynde for a rock-ish rendition of "If It Makes You Happy." The second star of Lilith Fair, of course, was the mama of it herself, McLachlan. Her voice was as balmy and breezy as the night; the amphitheater was enraptured, quiet, hypnotized. McLachlan knew how to flaunt her impeccable voice - she often tapered her tunes with long, a capella notes. She perfectly sang hits like "Black & White" and "Adia," the highlight being a very sensual, almost tactile performance of "Ice Cream" in which McLachlan moaned to and flirted with the mic and crowd. An all-company rendition of "I Shall Be Released," featuring guest Joan Osborne, ended the evening on a transcendent tone. Lilith wasn't all lovely. Though peddled as an all-female concert festival, more men performed at Lilith than women: aside from Crow's female violist/guitarist, all of the Lilith headliners were backed by all-male bands. The image of the all-male five-piece band fronted by a pretty face and lithe body seemed to undermine Lilith's empowering girls rule! image. Plus, McLachlan's incessant insinuation of herself in everyone else's set became increasingly annoying, proving most ridiculous when McLachlan referred to a lyrics cheat sheet to sing "Strong Enough" with Crow. McLachlan was like the innocent star of the school play who wants to read everyone else's lines, too. Yes, we all falter at times, but we're all still innocent, still searching for some rollicking rock'n'roll and liquid-voiced lullabies, and finding it, once again, at Lilith Fair.
-- Dara Cook (dcook3@idt.net)
'N Sync 'N Sync: they sweat. You get yourself an 'N Sync ticket and you're guaranteed an hour-and-a-half of unbridled sweat action. Which, to us, seemed rather odd. You'd think that the guys would just half-ass it, knowing that the girls would go home hoarse and happy anyway. But not only do they sweat; they dance like nobody's business, they play to the crowd, they crank it out hi-NRG, and they don't stop till the lights come up. 'N Sync actually wants to win you over, or at least make it look like they're trying. During a speedy, snappy set which made the Backstreet Boys' recent Tour O' Slow Jams look like the concert equivalent of Seconal, 'N Sync proved themselves to be nothing short of upbeat, fun, and slickly professional, even if the fivesome's collective technical accuracy was so sharply delineated that it led one to believe there may be a cyborg or two lurking in its ranks. Justin (the Monchichi-like blond one) barely batted an eye when he got pegged with a slew of Beanie Babies during "For the Girl Who Has Everything," and J.C. (the cheekboned one) was showboating so hard by the end of "I Drive Myself Crazy" that we temporarily feared he was having a heart attack. But he just kept on going, and like true suckers, we giddily went along. From "Here We Go" to the final encore of "Tearin' Up My Heart," the 'N Sync machine motored along with precision, secure in the knowledge that following up a slow number like "God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You" with any less of a jam than "I Want You Back" would spell disaster. 'N Sync's stage presentation, however, is half pure entertainment and half huh?, from the 30-foot-tall pop-lockin' body-rockin' electric boogaloo loincloth-garbed gargoyle to the dayglo Kabuki fencing outfits the guys wore while twirling around giant fluorescent pixie sticks... oh, did we happen to mention this all happens before the show even starts? And while the segment during which 'N Sync traveled back in time to perform covers was an adorable idea, the execution was amusing for all the wrong reasons. OK, watching the guys play instruments was cute (though shaky) for the '60s segment, but the Wonders' "That Thing You Do"... well, it's safe to say that song doesn't quite qualify for "back in the day" status. A Jackson 5 medley for the '70s made far more sense, but the Afro wigs troubled us a bit, not to mention the introductory "educational film" which told us that while kids were getting killed at Kent State and in Vietnam, the Jackson 5 were riiiding hiiigh on the charts. (Um… hooray?) The concept master behind this segment has either a truly perverse sense of humor or no brain. It's anyone's call. Still, 'N Sync's chops managed to escape the more circus-like productions unscathed, and when they came out to perform their cover of Christopher Cross' "Sailing," harnesses sent all five guys up to the ceiling and flying over the crowd. It came out of nowhere, it whipped the crowd into a frenzy, and it was darn classy on top of that. Of course, compared to some of the things we'd seen, maybe that's not saying much. But the gimmick sent everyone home happy -- something that's not all that easy to come by. Confounded by 'N Sync's success? So were we. But after this show, it makes a weird kind of sense. We're pleasantly surprised... and at the same time, downright terrified.
-- Kim Stitzel
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