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THE RADIATORS
IT’S ALL ONE SHOW

To the untrained eye, the Radiators look suspiciously like a jam band. They do, after all, jam — the shows invariably run two and a half hours, each with its fair share of two-guitar workouts, segues pulled out of thin air, and spur-of-the-moment cover tunes. What’s more, these guys seem to start every show wherever the last one left off, the first song picking up a groove they left hanging the night before. In some parallel universe, they probably never stop playing; you just show up and get your two and a half hours’ worth.

Yet they’re the kind of jam band that can spring up only in New Orleans, developing a good sense of rock history and honing its sound by keeping the same line-up together for a quarter-century and counting. In particular, guitarists Dave Malone and Camile Baudoin are so well synched by now that it’s not always possible to tell who’s playing what, and the band take left turns like nothing. Keyboardist and main songwriter Ed Volker may show some debt to the likes of Lowell George and Robbie Robertson, but he’s more eclectic than either and maintains his personal sensibility whether he’s being funny or soulful. It’s the songwriting, along with his and Malone’s strong singing, that makes the Radiators sound more like a great lost classic rock band.

Rolling into the Middle East last Thursday, the quintet played for a smaller crowd than usual, without the usual crew of tapers around the soundboard. Perhaps for that reason, they didn’t do anything truly unusual on stage. (During a recent Mardi Gras show in New Orleans, a song called "I Was a Teenage Radiator" was, it’s reported, written on the spot.) But there’s still no such thing as a typical show, and the Middle East set had the usual mix of band standards, rarely played originals, and out-of-nowhere covers ("She’s Not There" based on the heavier Santana version rather than the Zombies’ original). The slinky, percussion-heavy "Devil’s Dream" was probably a good indication of what the Mardi Gras shows sounded like.

As ever, the band made up the set list as they went along, and the show took a few songs to catch fire; "City of Refuge," which crossed a traditional gospel tune with an unlikely nod to Dave Brubeck’s "Take Five," was the number that did the trick. And since there was room to get up close, it was easier to catch the band’s secret weapon in Frank Bua’s drumming. He doesn’t do a lot of fancy fills, preferring to keep the backbeat good and heavy, but he gives the two guitarists room to explore and knows when to reel them back in. When the set closed with a rare shot of near-punk volume on "Nail Your Heart to Mine," you could appreciate how well they’d built the last stretch of the set to that big moment of release.

BY BRETT MILANO

Issue Date: February 25 - March 3, 2005
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