Jam Productions :: Concert Reviews & Music Videos: October 2006

Lindsey Buckingham 10/24/06 & 10/25/06 @ Park West

Solo Buckingham goes his own way
By Joshua Klein
Published October 24, 2006, 11:55 PM CDT

It takes a certain kind of genius to sell millions of records yet remain something of a cult artist. That's Lindsey Buckingham in a nutshell, an enigmatic rock 'n' roll icon whose idiosyncrasies helped catapult Fleetwood Mac to the top while simultaneously keeping his fitful solo career burbling somewhere just under the radar.

Buckingham has cited his erstwhile role as the leader of Fleetwood Mac as an excuse for the 14-year gap between solo records, but part of that delay was no doubt due to his legendary perfectionism. As the excellent CD "Under the Skin" demonstrates, there are worse things to aspire to than perfection, and Buckingham's rare set sans-Mac at the Park West on Tuesday was worth the wait too.

Freed from arena-size expectations, Buckingham clearly relished the more intimate crowd as well as the chance to show off the more intimate sides of his playing. Gems such as "Trouble" and "Go Insane" were stripped of some of their more over-the-top arrangements to highlight Buckingham's wonderfully sideways approach to melody, and he dialed down "Never Going Back Again" (one of several Fleetwood Mac songs played) to almost inaudible levels, the sound of his whispered voice and his fleet fingers barely picking at the strings all that could be heard in the packed club.

That picking is partly what has made Buckingham such a one-of-a-kind talent, with his deft finger work combining the precision of folk with the jagged-edge passion of rock, but the solo showcase "I'm So Afraid" showed Buckingham obviously enjoys his more traditional guitar-hero status too.

He also obviously loves subverting his reputation for crafting nothing but Baby Boomer anthems like "Go Your Own Way" by digging out such lesser-known pop nuggets as "Save Me A Place" and "I Know I'm Not Wrong" from Fleetwood Mac's oft-misunderstood and underappreciated 1979 masterpiece "Tusk." Most impressive was how well those songs meshed with new tracks such as "Show You How," "It Was You" and "Cast Away Dreams," compositions decades apart in age but oddly contemporaneous in terms of sound and slightly skewed vision.

A lot of credit goes to Buckingham's spare backing trio for helping him recreate such intricate confections, and also for helping the once notoriously high-strung singer wind down. After a frenzied run through the admittedly doofy "Holiday Road" (a song that ended with the group barking like dogs), everyone in the room was grinning stupidly, having witnessed a man of untold wealth and talent simply act a little silly.

Click Here for the Review at ChicagoTribune.com

Trey Anastasio 10/18/06 & 10/19/06 @ The Vic Theatre

Post your reviews of the shows here!

The Fray 10/17/06 @ The Aragon

The Fray's TV-ready songs, wholesome air wear thin

By Bob Gendron
Published October 17, 2006, 1:30 AM CDT

Network TV's popularity among viewers may be on the wane, but its appeal to contemporary musicians has never rated higher. With radio's once-dominant influence continuing to nose dive in the face of myriad entertainment options, artists are increasingly turning to serial TV programs for widespread exposure.

No act has benefited from such a strategy more than The Fray, which has become something of a phenomenon in light of its songs being featured on "Scrubs" and "Grey's Anatomy." Despite having just one album to its credit, the Denver piano-pop quartet quickly sold out back-to-back concerts at the Aragon, a rare feat for a veteran band let alone a rookie group.

Performing a 75-minute set Monday at the first of its two-night stand, The Fray got several assists from thousands of female admirers, whose piercing shrieks and high-pitched choruses occasionally prompted frontman Isaac Slade to step away from the microphone and bask in the appreciative glow. Singing gentle tunes seemingly directed at girls who patiently wait alone on bleachers for a boy to ask them to dance, Slade and his crew looked like clean-cut guys who mothers hope their daughters will bring home for dinner. Faith-streaked undercurrents and comforting themes buttressed this sense of wholesomeness, and hinted at the band's Christian rock crossover potential.

Augmented with a bassist, The Fray brought a harder-edged stomp to a handful of mid-tempo-rock selections, "Little House" shaking with intrigue and "She Is" twinkling with wish-upon-a-star brightness. "All At Once" said all the right things and gushed emotional electrolytes, the adult-contemporary number tailor-made to serve as background music for a dramatic scene involving a romantically conflicted character. The only thing missing was a script.

Still, Slade's pained moans and pointless dawdling couldn't conceal the paint-by-numbers quality that mired a majority of the plodding material. Slow beats, stock chords and simple piano bars predictably gave way to candy-floss hooks, while the band's melodic parallels to Coldplay became obvious when Slade relied on his falsetto. "Vienna" directly copped U2's "Gone," while an ill-advised cover of Queen's "We Will Rock You" did anything but.

Slade even floated atop the crowd during the smash "Over My Head (Cable Car)," but his precisely timed return to the stage betrayed the move's lack of spontaneity—and The Fray's ultimate dearth of ideas.

Click here to read the review on ChicagoTribune.com

Evanescence 10/17/06 @ The Riviera Theatre

Sold Out Show! Let us know all about it here!

Paul Simon 10/16/06 @ Rosemont Theatre

Simon strolls through his past
Slip-slidin' Rosemont show a laid-back tour of his music

By Greg Kot
Tribune music critic
Published October 18, 2006

Paul Simon strolled on stage Monday at the Rosemont Theatre like a guy preparing to rake his lawn in rolled-up sleeves, blue jeans and a baseball cap.

His two-hour concert was just as casual, a breezy tour of five decades spanning Simon and Garfunkel classics, solo hits and a few relative obscurities. Simon's not much for glamor, but his musical curiosity remains acute, and his willingness to explore and expand his repertoire makes him a true rarity: One of the few '60s icons who still consistently challenges himself and his audience.

That said, not all of Simon's detours have led to memorable music. His latest album, "Surprise," found him collaborating with avant-rock maestro Brian Eno with mixed results. Four songs from that work surfaced Monday, but only two made much of an impression: "How Can You Live in the Northeast," which built to the only big rock finish of the main set, and "Wartime Prayers," a poignant acoustic lament that shrouded a protest song.

Though backed by a versatile seven-piece multi-culti band, Simon explored a narrow sliver of textured pop. The rhythmic foundation was so understated that one wondered why the singer needed two drummers; master percussionist Steve Gadd would've sufficed on his own. Simon might've better invested in a couple of backup singers to buttress his thin vocals and bolster the undernourished vocal arrangements for "Cecilia," "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" and "Love Me Like a Rock."

Instead, he was far more enamored with building a delicate latticework of guitars with Vincent Nguini, Mark Stewart and bassist Bakithi Kumalo. On this front, he succeeded admirably, and the interplay among them provided the concert's focal point. Nguini in particular has been key to opening up Simon's sound since the Cameroonian guitarist joined the singer 20 years ago. His airy chord structures and open-ended harmonics have taken Simon into a more exotic brand of folk-pop, as exemplified by the night's finest performances. Nguini embroidered "Slip Slidin' Away," first with washes of notes, then with low-level feedback. On "You're the One," Nguini's strumming reflected the melancholy and guarded expectation in Simon's voice. Here was the emotional core of the show, that sense of drifting through the years with the nagging doubt that "life could be better," as Simon sang in "Train in the Distance." It's not the stuff of dance parties or chest-thumping anthems, and Simon didn't strive for those heights. Even the more ebullient tunes from "Graceland" sounded muted, and the normally sure-fire "Mrs. Robinson" came off dreamy and distant. On the latter, Simon flirted with a Bo Diddley beat, but it never quite kicked into high gear. Almost nothing did on this night, and that seemed to be part of the plan.

For now, he's done with the polyrhythmic celebrations that characterized his post-"Graceland" tours, and that made for a night long on cerebral pop and subtle interplay, but short on rousing crescendos.

Click here to read the review on ChicagoTribune.com

Ani DiFranco 10/13/06 @ The Chicago Theatre

Let us know what you think about the show!