Wednesday, November 27, 1996
CONCERT:
‘Party of Five’ theme song shines spotlight on band’s successful
historyBy Jeff Hilger
Daily Bruin Contributor
When a band has been making music for 13 years and finally
scores a top 20 single, one might expect it to make sure it
capitalizes on the success.
The Wisconsin-based BoDeans, however, seem perfectly content to
continue what they’ve been doing for 10 years: making solid,
tuneful albums and playing at clubs and small theaters filled with
a strong, supportive core group of devoted fans.
At a sold-out House of Blues on Saturday, the BoDeans did just
that. Taking the stage at 11:15 p.m., they played on until nearly
1:30 a.m., and the crowd sang and danced along throughout.
After making three critically acclaimed but moderate selling
albums in the mid-1980s, the band had a strong following in many
Midwestern cities and towns, but had yet to find mass critical
success elsewhere in the country.
With their fourth album, the Bodeans expressly tried to create a
more commercial, radio-friendly sound. It succeeded, but no major
single came out of it.
On the fifth album, the band’s two lead singers and song
writers, Kurt Neumann and Sammy Llanas, decided to just forget
about the whole commercial side and just write songs that they
really liked. This collection contained a track, "Closer to Free,"
which some music executive at Fox TV apparently heard and liked,
and it became the theme song for the sitcom, "Party of Five."
After that, the song became a
top 20 hit, and the band’s album, released soon after, sold
200,000 copies (as opposed to the 30,000 predicted by the record
company). Now, the BoDeans have released their sixth studio album;
their stop at the House of Blues was part of a nationwide tour to
promote it.
The majority of the crowd at the show clearly wasn’t there just
to hear "Closer to Free." They sang along most fervently with the
band’s older songs.
Neumann and Llanas, although part of a band, are really a
powerful duo in the tradition of the Indigo Girls. Their two voices
were clearly distinctive but they blended together beautifully. The
songs that they performed were often about personal stories and
issues.
The band opened its two-hour set with "Idaho," a rolling melodic
tune from its fifth album. A few songs after that, Neumann sang
"Hurt by Love," a song he wrote for his father when his parents
divorced after 36 years of marriage.
The most powerful point in the main set came when Llanas sang a
song called "Naked" from the fourth album. In the song, he wants to
start over with somebody and wants to bare his soul to his partner.
The previously mentioned "Closer to Free" closed the main set, and
made room for what eventually became three encores.
The highlight of the encores came when the duo returned for the
second encore and said, "We’re going to try to do something
different here." They then proposed that they were going to go
"completely unplugged."
It’s common these days for bands to do a few acoustic tracks
during the show and call them unplugged, but they always do the
songs with at least some amplification (in other words, mikes are
on and acoustic guitars are plugged into the speakers).
However, what the BoDeans proceeded to do was to step in front
of their mikes and sing to the somewhat rowdy, definitely drunk
crowd of people who’d been jumping and dancing for the previous two
hours. It took over a minute for the crowd to quiet down completely
and achieve the campfire atmosphere.
As soon as they did, the singers launched into a beautiful
rendition of "Only Love," a tune from their second album. It was a
risky move, and not everyone in the crowd remained silent
throughout, but it definitely worked.
The final song , "Still the Night," came from the band’s first
album, and was one of the only songs where the two singers trade
lines back and forth throughout the verses. The set, which focused
mostly on their most recent two releases, definitely pleased the
crowd, who left content knowing that this band will be around for a
while.
GENEVIEVE LIANG
BoDeans play to a sellout crowd Saturday.