Monday, February 28, 2000
Bogart's show proves Bacon a flatliner as rocker
BY CHRIS VARIAS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
There's little to be said when the best song a band can manage is a Kenny Loggins cover.
Actor Kevin Bacon and his brother Michael have this band, cleverly named the Bacon Brothers, who played Bogart's Saturday night. The show was easily one of the most dull the club has booked in recent memory, much worse than Keanu Reeves' Dogstar show last year.
It happens all the time — actors making like rock stars. Some actor will make a record and hit the road. He'll do interviews, and some journalist will write, “He's not as bad as (name of some other actor/rocker).” Then, invariably, the show will stink, and the record will make a beeline for the cutout bin faster than you can say Don Johnson.
The case of the Bacon Brothers is curious in that Michael is the “serious” musician, but he's not the better Bacon musically speaking.
The Brothers each sang about half the songs, and Michael's were of the James Taylor wimp-folk variety, not one worth remembering. He even had the nerve to bust out his cello for a two-minute solo intro to Kevin's “Ten Years in Mexico,” as if anyone came out to hear the brother of that guy who gets paddled in Animal House saw away on a cello.
That left Kevin, who fancies himself a sort of heartland rocker, to save the show. His songs were the memorable ones, for dubious reasons.
In “Arm Wrestling Woman,” Kevin sang from the vantage of a guy “sitting in this trailer park tonight.” Trailer park — heh heh, very funny. Nothing warms the heart like a rich movie star making fun of the poor.
The crowd (the club was less than half full) screamed when Kevin first stepped to the mic, but any measure of hysteria quickly waned and soon fans began enjoying the show as if it were any old bar band playing.
The Brothers were backed by a four-man band, including a percussionist. Talk about the margins of the music business — banging bongos for the Bacon Brothers.
During the encore of the 11/2-hour show the band did two covers. One was Smokey Robinson's “Don't Look Back,” and they put forth a bland version of an often-covered song.
So, by default, the night's best song was “Footloose,” Kenny Loggins' hit from that '80s Kevin Bacon flick. Kevin laughed through the song, never taking it too seriously, which could signal that he knows he's just a pawn of pop culture, not a master of it.
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