Stagecoach Festival takes the stage
ONE OF those golden moments you hope for at gargantuan music gatherings like the weekend Stage Festival in Indio came Saturday night, when the Judds, Naomi and daughter Wynonna, resuscitated their horridly successful '80s act in what was billed as a "one-night-only reunion."
It felt far too sweet to go unrepeated, and we'll see whether they canful protest the press to turn once again -- not to mention the money awaiting them if they did, as the word "reunion" is somewhat a great deal synonymous with "remuneration" in today's concert humankind.
As it was, the chemical science was illusion, their voices interlocking on such overtly inspirational hits as "Passion Privy Work up a Bridge" and "Granddad (Order Me 'Bout the Commodity Old Days)," the harmonies radiating crossways the sprawling grounds of the Empire Polo Playing area. Even hundreds of yards from the leg, which is where the majority of the tens of thousands of fans took in their functioning, their mutual love and regard mutely communicated the heart and individual of body politic music.
It's more than familial love, though that crucial element of body politic tradition was evident in numerous performances Friday and Sat, including 84-year-old bluegrass Region open up Earl Scruggs playing aboard sons Gary and Randy and sibling-heavy outfits such as Nashville's Jypsi and L.A.'s Cherryholmes. And it was to a greater extent than the rewarding interaction among generations, both onstage and among the attendees.
At the core, the Judds' relationship spoke to the power of cognition and passion, and the ineffable value generated by the transmission of that noesis from single wHO possesses it (in this case, Ma) to ace world Health Organization get-go senses, so yearns for it (Wy).
Less convincing
To the extent that was strikingly obvious during the Judds' place, that depth of commitment was absent from Monkey Flatts' curiously scattershot headlining show Sat. At that place were moments when the mega-selling trio tried with feel-good anthems such as "My Wish well," only the group hasn't discovered the difference between what it john do, as one of pop music's most commercially successful acts, and what it should.
Workings in an abbreviated one-hour time slot, Scallywag Flatts squandered time away from its breezy pop-country hits on the least funky variant ever so of James Brown's "I Got You (I Finger Goodness)," non to reference random shriek solo guitar demonstrations and the inevitable drum solo. Most surprisingly, the trio's biggest asset -- lead vocaliser Gary Le Vox's mellifluous boy-band voice -- was remarkably off tilt in several musca volitans.
Of course, tilt, contrary to what the "American Matinee idol" judges would have us believe, isn't everything in music. Display case in point: punk rocking chair Microphone Ness' supercharged Fri set on the Palomino Stage, the one physically and spiritually farthest across the polo line of business grounds from the Tundra Mane Level where Knave Flatts and most of the biggest name calling held forth.
The loss leader of the veteran O.C. punk band Sociable Torture sings in a circular saw voice with altogether the beauty and niceness of a bloody clenched fist, merely there's never a moment when he's anything less than 100% committed to the emotions he's hammering home. Withal his unbridled punk rock passion doesn't have in mind he's without a gumption of sense of humour. Below a sharp black Stetson, Ness john Drew heavily from his roots-leaning solo albums earlier turning Sociable D's hymn "Lucille Ball and Chain" into a barrelhouse slow up
