New York-based jam band target true devotees
M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The vibrant music scene of New York has a long history of turning its back on the rock establishment.
Once a decade, the scene produces a slew of bands that started their own revolutions before turning the world upside down.
In the late 1960s, when major rock acts immersed themselves in chemical substances and preached about peace and love in the Summer of Love, The Velvet Underground was venturing into every rock perversion with Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable and later helped launch hundreds of brainy independent rockers.
In the mid 1970s, when the world was consumed by the pompousness of progressive rock and heavy metal's swagger, the Ramones tore down the excesses and kicked off the revolution of punk minimalism.
Bands such as Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and all from the Blank Generation, later elevated minimalism to a higher artistic plane.
A decade later, when the fixation with New Wave had reached an alarming level, Sonic Youth declared the end of New Wave with their dissonant guitar and tribal beat and kicked off the No Wave movement.
In the early 1990s, when mainstream rock was in the throes of grunge, New York was heaven for free-thinking musicians, while the crumbling real-estate market gave rise to a new generation of clubs that spawned hordes of innovative bands such as Blues Traveler, Phish and God Street Wine.
Among members of the pack was Lower Manhattan-based Spin Doctors, a band that mattered in the early 1990s with their debut album, Pocket Full of Kryptonite.
After a considerable period below the radar, the four-piece band performed at Jakarta Convention Center (JCC) on Wednesday, a gig that also served as a promo tour for their first proper album in six years, Nice Talking to You.
The band, who shared the bill with local pop band Peterpan, performed with their original slate after a revolving door of lineup changes following their chart decline.
The one-hour-plus performance built its strength on the hippie charm of vocalist Chris Baron and the funky, and, at times, meandering guitar of Eric Schenkman.
Casual fans that had bought tickets to hear the Spin Doctors hit, Two Princes, must have gone home disappointed, as the late evening gig was strictly for loyal fans -- or at least those who had the patience to appreciate some lengthy jamming.
Although not as chronic as their fellow New Yorkers, Phish, Spin Doctors decided to redo their songs on stage the way a jam band would have done.
In Little Miss Can't Be Wrong, another hit off their debut album, Schenkman delivered a lengthy, scalding solo -- in fact no longer fashionable according to music biz rules these days -- an act that he would repeat for each song performed in the show.
However, the solo also proved to be a major turn-off for some in the crowd -- callow youths who thought it had failed to draw them in quickly enough.
They walked away from the stage; those who opted to remain were devoted Spin Doctors fans who had grown up listening to their songs in the mid-1990s, some of them still in work clothes.
Aside from Schenkman's dexterity, the fans were stuck with Barron's geeky charisma -- his antics between numbers became something of an attraction in their own right.
Before launching an acoustic rendition of Can't Kick the Habit, Barron made concertgoers giggle when he appeared unfazed after hitting a wrong note on his guitar.
Two Princes, a song that even a passerby could dance to thanks to its tuneful groove, was the final number.