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Black Crowes get lost in endless jam |
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Written by TAMI OWENS / Photos by ANDY SCHWEGLER
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Wednesday, 12 July 2006 |
How backward looking and sounding can a band get and still maintain a 21st century fan base? At a beautiful venue, with perfect weather, the lake at your back and the Chicago Skyline glowing The Black Crowes challenged that theory and found it hard to handle.
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The Black Crowes with Robert Randolph
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 Entertainment
Art
Charter One Pavilion at Northerly Island
Chicago, Ill.
June 24, 2006
Setlist
1. Waiting Guilty
2. Hotel Illness
3. Sting Me
4. Cypress Tree
5. Got to Get Better In a Little While
6. Girl From a Pawnshop
7. Up on Cripple Creek
8. Downtown Money Waster
9. Thorn in my Pride
10. Pearly Queen
11. Hard to Handle
12. Remedy
13. No Speak, no Slave
Encore
14. This Wheel's on Fire
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The Robinson brothers are currently on tour back together after several solo outings and are in search of a groove. At Charter One on Saturday they played a few old favorites but seemed more interested in covering the bands they love to emulate. Such covers like The Band’s "Cripple Creek" and "This Wheels on Fire" or Traffic "Pearly Queen” proved the '70s are still alive and kicking with the Crowes. They even channeled groups as diverse as the Allman Brothers to Hawkwind. This in turn unfortunately led to overdrawn and wandering jams including a '60s drum solo during "Thorn in My Pride" that turned the audience off and left us wondering if they were trying to kill what little fan base they have left?
The 2 hour set did have moments like the southern bluesy beauty of "Hotel Illness" and the desperation of “Thorn in my Pride” that helped to remind us why we were there in the first place. Yet overall the Black Crowes managed to kill any momentum these songs generated by the end of their performance. Chris, Rich and the boys might want to try to find that happy medium buzz and remember that they are playing to a crowd of fans that want to hear THEIR tunes and not watch a bunch of stoned hippies lost in a haze.
Robert Randolph played an energized opening set but he too lost his way in jams that should have been edited and was foreshadowing of what was to come. Randolph‘s backup singer and his "lil' sister" handled that chore well but still lacked the pipes to handle a song truly on her own. Still, Randolph did his best to get the crowd pumping displaying his guitar skills for what would prove to be a lackluster evening of endless jams. Powered by AkoComment 2.0! |
