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Review: Extreme/Dan Reed Network, O2 Academy
He may not dress like one these days, but Dan Reed sure seems to enjoy being a rock star again. After all that time spent in a Buddhist monastery and his subsequent intimate solo tours, one might be forgiven for wondering whether his heart was still in it. But here he is, bounding about the stage, Trump-bashing, cussing, throwing shapes in dad-dancing style and even pilfering bassist Melvin Brannon II’s beret to wear at a jaunty angle.
The Dan Reed Network never reached Bristol back in the day, but they make up for lost time by playing this show as though they’re the headliners. From opener Cruise Together onwards, Dan is in fine voice and ace guitarist Brion James is all flailing dreadlocks as he nails every solo. Only Rob Daiker’s keyboard sound anchors the band in the late ’80s.
is needed now More than ever
But what becomes clear very quickly is that the rather anaemic and very much of-its-time production of those early albums did the band no favours at all, toning down both the rock and the funk, presumably in pursuit of a mainstream pop audience.
On stage, it all works so much better – encouragingly nowhere more so than in Champion, the sole song they air from new album Fight Another Day. Built on a big, slow, dirty riff with ribcage-rattling bass from Brannon, this is the Dan Reed Network as we always wanted them to sound.
During Baby Now I, they stretch out and have fun by dropping in a few bars of I Was Made For Loving You and Enter Sandman. But time is tight and there’s no room for self-indulgence. Hit-that-wasn’t Rainbow Child flirts with tweeness but emerges unscathed and the final straight brings Ritual and Get To You. Untethered from Bruce Fairbairn’s feeble (over-)production, both emerge as full-on, dynamic funk-metal monsters. Dan leaves us promising to be back next year. Make sure you don’t miss out Bristol, fella.
Like DRN, headliners Extreme serve up what is essentially a nostalgia show, with just one song recorded in the current millennium. This tends to imply a bunch of old lags hacking out the hits in a desultory fashion during a final pension-boosting trot round the circuit. Not a bit of it here. Extreme attack the stage like hungry youths enjoying their first taste of success. Whippet-thin singer Gary Cherone poses, preens, struts – hell, even sashays – all over the stage, clambering up the lighting rig at one point, while preposterously talented guitarist Nuno Bettencourt (yes ladies, he still has lovely hair) is clearly overjoyed at the opportunity to shred, which is not afforded during his day job with popstrel Rihanna. Perhaps galvanised by DRN’s Melvin Brannon II, third remaining founder member Pat Badger – aka the “pasty-faced white boy” – handles most of the funk duties with suitably gut-punching bass.
Mind you, they frontload the set with some of their best material, opening with three tracks from the mega-selling Pornograffitti: It(‘s a Monster), L’il Jack Horny and Get the Funk Out, which we might have anticipated would be reserved for the encore. They can’t really sustain this for a generous two-hour set. But there are surprises ahead, beginning with Rest in Peace – the first of an unexpectedly large number of tracks from III Sides to Every Story – the concept album that they had the temerity to record just as grunge reared its sulky, petulant head, and which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. How time flies, eh?
Hip Today (“…you’ll be gone tomorrow”) seemed a little sour when it was released as an unsuccessful single as Extreme’s star waned back in 1995, but now stands as something of a vindication. How many of their more fashionable, critic-courting peers could sell out the Academy months in advance of their return to Bristol after a 26 year absence?
They take things down a bit with an acoustic section, during which new-ish boy drummer Kevin Figueiredo plays a little mini-me kit at the front of the stage. With its multi-part harmony vocals, the Beatles-y Tragic Comic from III Sides… underlines the band’s willingness stretch genre convention that gave rise to Brian May’s claim that they were the natural heirs to Queen.
The singalong Hole Hearted is, of course, the other acoustic hit from Pornograffitti. Then Nuno gets the first of two solo spots with Midnight Express. “We’re being paid by the note,” he jests. “I’m now going to bankrupt the promoter.” Later, he delivers even more notes in the frantic Flight of the Wounded Bumblebee, which, as on record, serves as an intro to the never-more-timely He-Man Woman Hater.
Their rarely credited willingness to embrace out-there-experimentalism bears fruit in the bonkers heavy bluegrass of Take Us Alive from 2008’s Saudades de Rock – the album nobody noticed, much less purchased (though Nuno accuses one member of the audience of doing so). And eventually, it’s back to Pornograffitti for the crowd-pleasing Decadence Dance.
The encore opens with the duo of Gary and Nuno performing More Than Words – aka the hit acoustic rock ballad from 1991 that isn’t To Be With You – and if we still had lighters we’d be waving them in the air. Rather oddly, Extreme then return to III Sides… for Warheads and the heavy-duty, Martin Luther King-sampling Peacemaker Die, which would, perhaps, have worked better earlier in the set. Finally, as if to remind us that they stole the Freddy Mercury Tribute Concert back in 1992, they deliver a triumphant We Are the Champions. It’s a rather obvious selection from the Queen canon, but gets the job done well enough for them to bask in applause. Who’d have predicted that Extreme would still be so hot all these years on?
All photos by Mike Evans
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