Top 10 Spectrum Music Moments

The Boss, The Who, Bowie, U2 ...

by A.D. Amorosi

By: Jim Horwat

Next to seeing and hearing the shockingly fun and frenetically sexy Pearl Jam do Townshend's "The Real Me" during last week's Last Call (honest to God, PJ was the best of the Spectrum's closers — a shock as Vedder and co. were never my fave), there was no better Who cover band than The Who itself. And with Keith Moon, the frantic, anxious ensemble was never better. This wasn't my first concert at the Spectrum; ELP, Zep, Edgar Winter, Yes and Jethro Tull came before it. But Moon's drumming was all that rock was meant to be and couldn't become again after he passed. So I'll call this my first "real" Spectrum event and let the rest of the gigs I saw there fall where they may.

Michael Jackson and James Brown had swivel and suave swinging their brands of R&B. But pound for pound, no one pirouetted, cartwheeled, bumped, grinded then hit every note on crazy cue like Bobby Brown did during several shows in the Don't Be Cruel years (reunited with a mature New Edition).

For his last tour with any true sort of persona (the yellow-haired douche of Let's Dance doesn't count), David Bowie turned on the bright whites, donned a waiter's black vest and pants, slicked back his orange hair and made stark Kraut-disco-cabaret while using the bellow-croon that the bespectacled Flight of the Conchords guy would one day do wicked impersonations of. I got chicken pox right after this show and learned to smoke Gitanes since it was what Bowie kept in his vest pocket. Best moment: the sinister "Sister Midnight."

Sparkly jumpsuits and heavenly harmonies aside, my main recollection about Earth, Wind & Fire's sensurround funk soirée was how I tripped so hard on mushrooms during "Reasons" — the night's quietest moment, the lovers' opus — that I had to be escorted from the building by friends, lest I be killed by more than a few men whose dates I screwed up with my chuckling hysteria.

 I'd already seen saw Luther Vandross and Teena Marie open for Rick James, and Shelia E open for Prince at this same venue. They were funky, passionate and they were poppy. But this Club MTV tour of glossy '80s-era sorts was funk-pop at its strangest: Tone Loc, Milli Vanilli, Was (Not Was), Information Society and Paula Abdul. W(NW) did "Dad, I'm in Jail." And honest, who didn't try to buy some funky cold medina after Loc moaned about it? These events were the precursors to the Power 99 Holiday jams and outdid them at every turn.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

It was OK that I missed 2009's Darkness on the Edge of Town redux. I caught the original with Bruce Springsteen at the intersection of rabid fury and epic grandeur with E Street at full blast. He might have been shaggier and jazzier the time previous ('76), but this was as punk as he'd ever get.

It would be a sad shame if I didn't mention how in my past, many of my Spectrum outings were fueled by cocaine. I out-drummed Steely Dan's New York Rock & Soul Revue in 1992 due to the protean effects of the white stuff, and the Blow Monkeys/Psychedelic Furs show (1986) was indeed furry, psychedelic and blow-filled. But I was so loudly coked-up during Ozzy Osbourne/Metallica in '86 — a great show, honest I remember it — that I'm certain Ozzy stopped to look at me. No, really.

Aerosmith and Guns 'N' Roses. Hair metal at its spikiest. This was a smoke-filled sex-scented gig where the older band still mattered (just barely, but that desperation made them manic and confident) and the young gun openers were hungry. If you didn't get laid during this two-night stand, you simply didn't have sex organs.

Even though I'd caught Alice Cooper's earlier grunge-glitter zenith with Billion Dollar Babies, 1978 was his best show of rip-roaring metal-meets-theatrical schmaltz. He kept leaping through a 3-D screen. Led Zeppelin ('75) might have been mightier with the whole thunder-of-the-gods thing (Jesus love and watchover John Bonham), and other metal bands might have made sleaze into an art form (Mötley Crüe), but Cooper was a better show. And when you needed him to be dark, it seemed unnaturally easy for him to go there.

Of all the post-punk legends to play the Spectrum, U2 came through loudest and clearest. I mean, 1993's pairing of synth-vets Depeche Mode and the blustery The The was awesome. R.E.M.'s 1995 show was the final breath of relevance Stipe and co. would ever exhale. (Each evening seemed like the band's last. It should've been.) But through their best album (Achtung Baby), Bono and his band trod arena rock's oddly experimental waters handily. That they did it with the doubly original spindlier Pixies as their opener was sad, scary and titillating. Plus Bono hadn't yet turned into a total self-righteous tool.

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)