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The Best of 1999/Live Pop
Friday, December 31, 1999 By Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Pop Music Critic
It was the year your parents wouldn't let you go to the Marilyn Manson show but didn't mind shelling out hundreds of dollars to take in a night on the town with the bad boys of Boomer-rock fantasy camp -- the Rolling Stones, who in their younger, more Bizkit-esque street-fighting days went so far as to title an album "Their Satanic Majesties Request."
They were out of their heads.
For the time.
Today, we've got Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, Marilyn Manson, KoRn and half a million hip-hop artists out there in the trenches making all the Stones' most celebrated efforts at bothering parents seem a trifle quaint.
But when it comes to making money, time is on their side. The tour that brought the band that really knocked 'em dead at Altamont to the Civic Arena in March went on to finish as the highest-grossing tour of 1999.
And the funny thing is, it was actually worth the price of admission.
All in all, it kind of makes you wonder who it was who cut the better deal with Satan.
Will the real Antichrist Superstar please stand up?
(31st Street Pub, July 1) As intense a rock 'n' roll experience as any you're likely to find with only one year left until we greet the new millennium, the Murder City Devils rocked the Pub like the Stooges with something to prove. If any band on any given night could be the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band, the Devils on that given night in the Strip were all that and a bag of speed, with energy so real it sent guitarists flying in the air without cliche and songs that played like instant punk-rock classics. If, at times, the debt to former punk-rock standard-bearers seemed a little obvious -- the beat to "Lust for Life," of all things -- any questions regarding the band's originality (or lack thereof) were answered with a swagger by the man behind the Buddy Holly glasses, Spencer Moody. In an age when all too many bands that rock the way the Devils do are undermined by shameless Iggy imitators on the mike, the Devils are blessed with a dork in Oxford cloth and glasses who's taken the essence of what made Iggy great and made it over in his own peculiar button-down image.
(A.J. Palumbo Theatre, Oct. 21) He's British in ways that make the Gallagher brothers look like extras from "The Dukes of Hazzard." As the Kinks could undoubtedly tell him, that's no way to go about staging a British Invasion. He needs to Americanize to maximize his hit potential here. And that would be a bloody shame. The man is brilliant just the way he is, with showmanship to spare, the kind of showmanship that understands the majesty and irony of taking the stage to the piped-in strains of Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Hey, it worked for Elvis. And I doubt his shows were half as funny. At least not on purpose.
(I.C. Light Amphitheatre, May 14) Courtney Love was everything you'd want your Courtney Love to be the night she gave her public here an up close and personal look at "Celebrity Skin."
Her performance was glamorous, glorious, sexy, hilarious, in-your-face obnoxious, confrontational, intense in a way that teetered on the edge of breaking down and all the other things a rock 'n' roll show should be yet so rarely is. She climbed the scaffolding in lingerie and heels. She teased a boy down front for dressing up like Kurt Cobain. She insisted the fireworks after the Pirates game were lighting up the sky for her. And then, after leading the band through a breathtaking set of the best of "Celebrity Skin" and "Live Through This," she threw her panties to the crowd. Now that, my friend, is showmanship.
(Civic Arena, April 16) Say what you will about Marilyn Manson pushing society's buttons to win friends and influence children, but rock 'n' roll theater never looked so good, so real, so huge. It was bigger than spectacle, big enough (and dark enough) to make you feel as though you were actually inside a movie -- a stylish post-apocalyptic science-fiction classic with somebody flashing his bum. And offensive? Like nothing you've seen. He made his entrance on a crucifix of TV sets and before it was over, the sets went up in flames to form a burning cross. He ripped the pages from a Bible and sang about dope with "DRUGS" spelled out in lights behind him. His stage show a mix of the Antichrist Superstar highlights and his less commercial glam look, Manson proved as brilliant and provocative an entertainer as his fans and detractors have come to expect. What made the concert even more sensational was the crowd-baiting opening set of the little punk-rock band from Nashville whose name we're not at liberty to print, although we do salute it.
(Star Lake, June 19) At 63, the Killer proved as mystifyingly brilliant as ever. For nearly an hour, the man avoided any contact with his own Top 40 catalog in favor of finding the essence of Jerry Lee in any tune he felt like singing, whether it be an amazingly soulful rendition of "Over the Rainbow" or the down 'n' dirty bump-and-grind of Little Richard's immortal "Lucille." His low-key, near-absurdist sense of humor only added to the charm of a rock 'n' roll moment to treasure that sadly left the oldies crowd befuddled. And he brought along guitarist James Burton, of Ricky Nelson/Elvis Presley and Costello fame. The energy that made him such a vital rock 'n' roll original may have left him years ago, but he ended the show with a hellfire version of "Great Balls of Fire" that found him standing up to kick his piano stool over the way a younger, wilder Killer woulda done it way back when.
(Club Laga, Oct. 23) Macy Gray has taken everything that made the golden age of soul so great and made it feel brand new, from the P-Funk call-and-response of "Why Didn't You Call Me" that opened the show to the funkified gospel approach with which she redefined the Beatles' new soul classic "With A Little Help From My Friends." Towering over the men in her 12-piece band, she commanded the stage like a veteran, calling out for the number of beats she wanted from her players as she brought the end of "Sex-O-Matic Venus Freak" to climax after sex-o-matic climax, proving once again that it's a woman's, woman's, woman's world.
(Metropol, Nov. 8) An acoustic guitar and harmonica draped around his neck, Jeff Tweedy strolled on stage and quietly wrapped his hands around the crowd's imagination with a stark, disturbing reading of "Via Chicago." Music doesn't get much darker than the sound of Tweedy resigning himself, with a lyrical shrug, to "I dreamed about killing you again last night and it felt all right to me," no anger, only resignation in his tired, cracking voice. Up next, the sugar-coated hooks of "Candyfloss" dispelled the darkness. And from there, the show went crashing through moods as abruptly as life itself. It's a challenging album, "Summerteeth." But Wilco was certainly up to the challenge of making it work as a live experience. If it rocked a little harder than the album does, the added rocking never came at the expense of conveying the almost claustrophobic despair at the heart of the band's new masterpiece.
(Civic Arena, March 11) What a joy to see the Stones dispense with the trappings of stadium rock in their first Arena appearance in 25 years. As expected, the set list was heavy with songs they seem to feel as though they need to trot out every single tour, but the highlights for serious fans were more likely the treasures in lighter rotation -- a gorgeous "Fool to Cry," a raucous "Some Girls," Keith's "You Got the Silver." Mick Jagger devoted the lion's share of his energy to proving he could move around the stage, at 55, like an overly eager Chihuahua on crack, which is fine, I suppose. Some people need to see that. But the moments I'll remember are the ones that found him focused on the music. It's the singer, not the acrobat. Here's hoping they never go back to the stadium shows.
(Rosebud, May 6) When you build a band around three zany, self-effacing Russian emigres with a healthy appreciation of Elvis as King of American Kitsch and a standup bass in the shape of a balalaika, let there no doubt: You will be featured on my year-end concert list. It's just the way I am. And the funny thing is they can actually play.
(Heinz Hall, April 15) So which generation is lying? The Boomers who tried so desperately to write Burt Bacharach's genius off as the worst sort of middle-brow kitsch? Or the new generation of Tarantino-loving Beck enthusiasts who think he's just the coolest guy their parents' age since Tony Bennett? I'll defer here to my mom, who never went to Woodstock and wouldn't know Beck if he danced the funky chicken on her lawn. She saw the concert and loved it for all the right reasons -- the timeless nature of hits as inspired as "Alfie" or "Do You Know the Way to San Jose;" the easygoing charm and warmth of Bacharach's interaction with the crowd; and, of course, the understated backing of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
HONORABLE MENTION:
Cibo Matto, I.C. Light Amphitheatre; Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Star Lake; The Mr. T Experience, Laga; Monster Magnet, Graffiti; Bette Midler, Civic Arena; Peter Himmelman, Rosebud; The Offspring with Ozomatli and The Living End, Civic Arena; Smashing Pumpkins, Metropol; Elton John, Star Lake; Willie Nelson, Heinz Hall; Kid Rock, Civic Arena; Richard Thompson, Rosebud.
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1. Murder City Devils