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After Dark: Rock reunion worth the trip
from: burlingtonfreepress.com
by Brent Hallenbeck
ESSEX JUNCTION – Three weeks ago I attended my high-school reunion (I won’t say what number it was, but it’s a big, fat round number that explains why my hair is getting so gray).
I attended another reunion of sorts Saturday night at the classic-rock concert at the Champlain Valley Fair, featuring three bands I haven’t really thought a lot about lately but that contributed heavily to the soundtrack of my high-school-era years – Foghat, Blue Oyster Cult and JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS.
I was not a big fan of high school – now that I’m out of my teen-angst years I enjoy the reunions more – but it’s hard to have any negative feelings for the music of the time. There’s something comforting about the familiarity, no matter how vague it might be.
It’s definitely vague for me with Foghat, or as I like to call them for no good reason other than my retention of some high-school juvenileness, Hogfat. All I remembered about Foghat was their big hit, "Slow Ride," and even more vague memories of somebody (maybe it was Bob Farley) carefully inking a Foghat logo on his spiral notebook during study hall. Or it might have been Kansas, or Boston, or one of those other six-letter hard-rockers of the era. But we digress.
I was a little hesitant heading to Saturday’s show because many of the long-ago groups I’ve seen in recent years – ZZ Top and The Village People at the fair and The Psychedelic Furs at Higher Ground come quickly to mind – plowed through their material with almost no emotion, as if a cab, or more likely a hefty paycheck, were waiting for them outside. Foghat got the night off to a good start with a short but energetic set that was definitely not dialed in.
Blue Oyster Cult is the only band of the three that I own any albums of (vinyl, of course) and that I had seen live before, in a bizarrely mismatched bill at Cornell University with funk-rockers Fishbone, acoustic punks the Violent Femmes and a polyrhythmic pop band out of Boston called Tribe. BOC was known for dark, mystical, sci-fi imagery, but unlike a lot of bands from that era (not to mention any names, Rush), they didn’t take themselves too seriously. It’s hard to take yourself seriously when one of your most recognizable tunes, "Godzilla," includes in its chorus "Oh, no/There goes Tokyo/Go-go Godzilla!"
The band, which still includes key members Eric Bloom, Buck Dharma and Allen Lanier, played "Godzilla" and its other big hits, "Burnin’ for You" and the mysterious "(Don’t Fear) the Reaper," which holds up as a terrific song more than 30 years after it was recorded. Saturday’s set included some fun unscripted moments, including Bloom trying unsuccessfully to bounce drumsticks off the stage into his hands. Another band not just dialing it in.
Unlike Foghat and Blue Oyster Cult, JOAN JETT had a pop-punk thing going that poked holes in the often-bloated hard-rock scene that spawned the other two bands on the bill. Also unlike Foghat and BOC, Joan is still vital recording-wise: She played a bunch of songs from the BLACKHEARTS 2006 CD "SINNER," including a lively rocker called "Change the World" and a cheeky ballad preaching tolerance, "Androgynous." She’s about to turn 47 and looks as trim, tough and youthful as ever; a guy next to me embraced Joan’s own gender-bending by shouting "Marry me, Joan – or my girlfriend!"
The fans were all right with her new material, but they really wanted to hear the hits, and they got ‘em. I was surprised at how many of her songs I recognized: "Bad Reputation" (her classic pop-punk anthem that opened the show), "Do You Wanna Touch Me" (the crowd loudly supplied the "oh yeah"s), "I Hate Myself For Loving You," "Crimson and Clover" and her big hit, "I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll," which slid almost imperceptibly out of the hard-rocking "Fetish." She surprised with a couple of great cover choices, including "Love Is All Around," the theme from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (a speedy version a la Husker Du) and the night’s closing tune, Sly and the Family Stone’s positive-vibe number "Everyday People."
It was a fun night of reliving music I didn’t know I cared about. As I did three weeks earlier after my high-school reunion, I left feeling surprisingly upbeat about the night’s events. Just like high school, I like the music better at the reunions, too.
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