A Tenuous Link to the Real Thing

One steamy and mosquito-ridden night in the late 80s, by the shores of the Mississippi River, I saw the Drifters, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the Temptations on the same concert bill. Well, not “the” Drifters, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and Temptations, but those groups as they existed at that time. None of the original Drifters remained, although some of the members had sung in versions of the group that had featured original members; Paul Revere was leading the Raiders, but neither Mark Lindsey nor Freddy Weller were still singing lead; the Temptations lineup contained three original members, but one of them had been recently rehired after being fired several years before, and none of them was David Ruffin or Eddie Kendricks.

How legitimate shows like these are is an eye-of-the-beholder question. You can certainly argue that an edition of the Temps without Ruffin and Kendricks is scarcely the Temps at all, but as long as a few original members are in the group, there’s at least a tenuous link to the real thing. The Drifters are another story, or the edition of the Little River Band that was on the summer circuit here in the Midwest a few years ago—with no members who had been in the group during its hitmaking days, their appearance is almost like karaoke, little more than merely a declaration that somebody involved with this group owns the rights to the name. What makes it all viable is that precious few people in attendance are going to care. You pay six bucks, wander around the fair all day, then kick back with a beer and a show that night, and by that point, sunburned and happily worn out, you aren’t likely to quibble about whether the band sounds just like the records, as long as you feel like you got your money’s worth. The Drifters/Raiders/Temptations show was one of the most enjoyable concerts I ever saw. The groups recreated their classic sound effectively enough to leave the audience delirious. (I suppose it could have been the beer, though.)

A similar sense of economic satisfaction is possible with this summer’s high-profile reunion tours, including the Police, Genesis, and Black Sabbath. Even with the ticket prices exorbitant ($57 to $227 for Genesis, plus Ticketmaster’s usual extortionate service fees), you’ll sleep peacefully afterward provided you feel like you got your money’s worth. And there’s a reasonable expectation that you will, given that these groups’ original lineups are mostly intact. Mostly is the key—if you discovered Genesis in the 1980s, you won’t care that Peter Gabriel isn’t along, but if your life was changed irrevocably by The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, you’re likely to care a great deal.

There’s the broader question of whether perpetually touring entities, like the Drifters, or temporary “reunion” tours, like the ones noted above, are matters of art or commerce. With the prospect of a multi-zillion dollar payday for a few months’ work, you can scarcely blame the Police for reuniting based on the financial possibilities alone, any more than you could blame 70s country rockers the Outlaws, who proudly announce on their website that they have finished a new album and will release it . . . as soon as they can interest a record company in giving them a deal. But give the Outlaws some credit for attempting to record new music in hopes of regaining some artistic relevance. How many albums of new material have the Eagles made since they started touring again? I haven’t heard anyone suggesting that there will be a new Genesis album in the wake of their tour. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker recently told a reporter that they’re in the “anti-nostalgia camp,” yet their 2006 tour featured nothing recorded after 1980, and they’re out again this summer with nothing new to promote.

You have to wonder if today’s top acts will be reuniting 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. Critic Ben Ratliff wrote last month in the New York Times that yes, reunion tours are here to stay, and that the best of them will see bands not merely reuniting, but reinventing themselves and their music. To be worthwhile, such tours can’t be about nostalgia, he says. On Sunday, critic Kelefa Sanneh wrote an essay defending nostalgia, and made a point similar to one I was making long before I had a blog—we listen to our old records (and, as Sanneh observes, attend reunion concerts) because they remind us of, and sometimes permit us to be once again, the people we used to be. Such shows will always have a nostalgic dimension. In that light, art and commerce are at least a little bit beside the point.

Recommended: BigO Worldwide has another interesting bootleg available for download—Steely Dan, live at the Rainbow Theatre in London, May 1974. It’s interesting to hear the Dan as a conventional full-sized rock band, with original members Denny Dias and Jim Hodder, and featuring Jeff Baxter and Michael McDonald. Key tracks: “Do It Again,” “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” and “This All Too Mobile Home.” Musically, the latter is nothing to get excited about—it’s mostly a percussion solo—but the fact that it never appeared on a Steely Dan studio album may be enough to excite you.

Also: I write mostly about music here, but this blog is about radio, too. It occurs to me that long after people have forgotten that radio ever had music or dramatic programming, they will remember how it covered news events that later became critical moments in history. Earlier this week, the history education blog Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub linked to several fine archives of historic news broadcasts that are worth exploring.