Concrete Blonde
Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, GA
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
by Jeff Miles – Contributing Writer/Photographer
Concrete Blonde has hit the road for a short winter tour in support of their new singles “Rosalie” and “I Know the Ghost.” This is their first new material since 2004’s “Mojave” album but hopefully it is just a sign of things to come. The new songs and Wednesday’s concert prove their songwriting and performance is just as strong as it has been at any point in their thirty year career.
For those who know them only from their 1990 radio/MTV hit “Joey,” Concrete Blonde consists of Gabriel Ramirez on drums, James Mankey on guitar and backing vocals, and Johnette Napolitano on vocals and bass. Rarely one for interviews, James Mankey plays as if his left hand is rooted firmly in early 80’s post punk/alternative guitar (Cure, Smiths, Wall of Voodoo) while his right hand is at home with bluesy 70’s rock. He melds these influences together into his own unique approach that is teeming with style and lacking pretense. Mankey is a true class act among many better known guitarists to emerge from Los Angeles in the 1980s. His versatility is the perfect counterpart to Napolitano’s incredible voice. With her deeply personal lyrics, they weave a tapestry of sounds and moods that easily shifts from the dark melodies of the “Bloodletting” album, to the Latin flavor of “Mexican Moon,” to the playful pop of “Happy Birthday.” Napolitano continues to be one of the most powerful singers and songwriters in rock and her voice fills a room like few others can.
Concrete Blonde opened the show quietly with the hauntingly beautiful new single “Rosalie.” A cover of Midnight Oil’s “Beds Are Burning” followed bringing forth the drums and electric guitars. Although it was never a song that I cared very much for, Napolitano did what all great artists do when performing other artist’s material: she made the song her own by presenting it to the audience in a new light. It was this song sung in her voice that played over and over in my head for days after the concert. Alternating between their more aggressive songs and the quieter more introspective tunes set the pace for their two hour set. They have so many fan favorites from their eight studio albums that they can pick and choose what they want to play. Choices covered the full span of their career from the upbeat guitar driven classics of “Bloodletting,” “Run, Run, Run,” and “Ghost of a Texas Ladies’ Man” to acoustic covers of Stan Jones’s ”Ghostriders in the Sky” and Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows.” The Cohen cover is a beautiful translation of one his best songs and was featured in the 1990 Christian Slater movie “Pump up the Volume.” Napolitano’s stripped down performance of this song was even more powerful than the recorded version and one of the highlights of the night. The second of the new songs, “I know the Ghost,” was also played before closing the show with an unforgettable acapella performance of “Tomorrow, Wendy.”
[slideshow id=10]
The show was not without incident. Early in the set, they played their 1989 hit “God Is a Bullet” which confronts the prevalence of gun violence in America. The irony of a room full of fans enjoying a song about senseless murder just days after the tragedy in Connecticut did not escape the band. Napolitano stopped the song about halfway through to ask for a moment of silence in recognition of the tragedy and to impress this very point upon the crowd. Five or six seconds into the silence, a woman directly in front of me shouts “You’re so hot!” Visibly angered, Napolitano asked her politely but firmly to be quiet. After completing the song, the heckler felt compelled to make her point again shouting “It had to be said,” further angering Napolitano who told her, not so nicely this time, to shut up and have some respect both for the individuals killed and for the people around her. The woman continued to make vain attempts to justify her outburst and the situation was quickly turning into a shouting match. The third time she was warned she’d have to leave if she continued. With the fourth outburst, Napolitano instructed security to remove her from the building. They complied with a roar of applause from the crowd. Good riddance. Nobody paid good money to hear her opinions and nobody goes onstage expecting to have to argue with the crowd.
Unfortunately, we were only able to photograph from the balcony, but it’s a small price to pay. Even as a photographer, I have some ambivalence about the pervasiveness of cameras/video at concerts these days. Generally it comes in the form of incessant cell phone flashes as the urge to document one’s presence at an event via social media often take priority over actually being at the event. Without the media pit upfront, fans are allowed closer interaction with the artists and isn’t that what a concert is really all about? After our allotted shooting time, this fan happily filled the spot vacated by the heckler and enjoyed the rest of the show!
Special thanks to Jeff for an outstanding review and photos. Definitely made me wish I had been there myself. Keep a look out for more from Jeff as a guest contributor in 2013! For more on Jeff, check his website out at http://www.eye-solationimages.com/home.htm
About The Author
