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Big bangs, little bangs, and another man in black
The Stones, the Click Five, and Neil Diamond live

The biggest bang in Boston last week was the arrival of the Rolling Stones, who kicked off an American tour with the first of two shows at Fenway Park on Sunday night. The sounds of warming up began filtering through the Fens as early as Thursday afternoon. Even the Boston traffic department got swept up in the excitement: special no-parking signs with Stones-song references were deployed throughout the Fenway as word went out that no tailgating would be tolerated. I don’t recall Springsteen or Jimmy Buffett getting such special treatment, but the Stones are the Stones. And they’ve got a history with Boston: just over 30 years ago, Mayor Kevin White had to secure the release of Keith and Mick from police custody in Rhode Island to avert a near riot at the old Garden, where the band were scheduled to perform.

There were no such snags this time around. The Stones long ago left the mayhem of the late ’60s and early ’70s behind: the backstage drug dealers of their younger days have been replaced by a cadre of nutritionists and personal trainers. And the "A Bigger Bang" tour — so named for their forthcoming Virgin album — was already running like a well-oiled machine as they swaggered through 22 tunes in just over two hours Sunday night.

That’s to say, the tour apparatus — the industrial stage set with its mechanized mini stage that plowed up into the center of the park mid set, its enormous inflatable lips-and-tongue balloon, its looming towers of lights, and its flashes of fireworks — was in perfect running order. The band, however, were as loose and playful as ever. You can joke all you want about adult diapers and corporate sponsors (this time it’s the mortgage company Ameriquest), but in the end they’re just a really good rock band with a great bunch of mostly blues-based songs to choose from. Sure, the deep crevasses on Keith’s face look like the result of violent geological upheavals, especially when they’re projected on the big screen at the back of the stage. But there were no backing tracks to smooth out the rough edges of the slashing chords of "Start Me Up," which opened the set, or the rushed Chuck Berry riffing of "She’s So Cold," a tune Mick admitted the band had rarely, if ever, played live before. Even more impressive, in terms of sheer grit, was the new blues tune "Back of My Hand," which had Mick playing some raw slide guitar in tandem with Ron Wood as Keith added improvised little string bends here and there. Now well into their 60s, the Stones are probably worth the $453 face-value tickets the couple to the left of me paid, and even maybe the $2600 the two people sitting in front of me bought theirs for on eBay.

Neil Diamond could take a lesson from the Stones. And until he hit the stage a week ago Monday at the new Garden, it seemed Rick Rubin, the producer who helped make Johnny Cash relevant to a new generation by stripping him back down to his raw essence, was well on his way to doing the same for Diamond. Flanked by two modestly sized screens that showed the back of the solitary man in black — Diamond, that is — the stage was big and barren except for a lone guitar stand that held Neil’s black acoustic guitar. It was all just an illusion. As the lights dimmed, one keyboard player rose into view, followed by another. Then one side of the stage opened up to reveal half of the rest of Diamond’s Vegas-sized band — 14 members in all, including a four-man horn section, two guitarists, three background vocalists, a drummer and a percussionist, and a bass player. Rubin may be indeed be working with Diamond on a stripped-down homonymous album scheduled by Columbia for November 8. But the once ultra-flashy Diamond hasn’t done much to tone down his live act. It wasn’t till he was five songs deep into a set heavy with melodramatic chestnuts like "Remember Me" and "Beautiful Noise" that he picked the black acoustic up for "Longfellow Serenade" and a rousing "Cherry, Cherry."

Unlike Cash, who’d been abandoned by country music’s core audience when Rubin got hold of him, Diamond remains in his element as an old-school, Vegas-style entertainer with mass appeal. As of August 19, according to Billboard, he’d grossed over $40 million from his mostly sold-out tour of North America. It’s hard to argue with numbers like that. True, the crowd he draws is mostly an older one, peppered, as it was at the Garden, with members of that younger demo an album produced by Rubin might just tap into. When Diamond dipped into material from his film The Jazz Singer — the sentimental "Love on the Rocks" and a jingoistic "Coming to America" replete with images of the Stars and Stripes blowing in the wind and a soaring bald eagle — it was difficult to imagine him making the leap to a younger audience. Then again, it’s hard to deny the elemental power of "Sweet Caroline" and "Cracklin’ Rosie," or Rubin’s track record as a tastemaker.

Downstairs at the Middle East a week ago Tuesday, the air was thick with teen spirit and nothing, not Neil, not the Stones, seemed more important than Boston’s newest pop sensation, who arrived fresh from opening for the Backstreet Boys Sunday night at the Tweeter Center and from two weeks of dominating MTV’s TRL. There were also plenty of patient parents wading among the restless young crowd, and a few scenesters congregated on the upper bar level who’d come to see what all the fuss was about.

Greetings from Imrie House (Lava/Atlantic), the Click’s neatly styled, guitar-driven debut, had only just hit stores that day. But from the moment the band took the stage, in the same matching Beatle-esque suits and shaggy haircuts they’re wearing on the album’s cover, and began to run through the disc’s 11 tracks from beginning to end, fans were ready to sing along. That would include the clean-cut choruses of peppy tunes like "Good Day" and the built-for-prom-night rocker "Just the Girl," a single written for the band by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger and produced, like the rest of the disc, by Mike Denneen at Q Division in Somerville.

To be sure, the Click Five come with some baggage, including a "special trading card" of each band member inside every CD (collect all five), and a keyboard player who spent most of the set blowing kisses to young girls in the crowd. (He appeared after the set upstairs wearing what looked to be a bathrobe and slippers.) And their polished, ever-so-slightly-punkish pop has been custom-tailored for today’s average teen. But unlike Britney or either of the Simpson girls, they’re not just Mouseketeers dancing along to backing tracks. They play hard, sweat hard, and hit pitch-perfect harmonies. They even finished the early-evening show with a little piece of ear candy for the parents in the crowd — a revved-up cover of the Wings classic "Jet."

 

BY MATT ASHARE

Issue Date: August 26 - September 1, 2005
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