Meager MixFest
is strong enough with Crow, Lauper
MixFest 2005
Bank Of
September 24, 2005
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in The Boston Globe, September 27, 2005
Mix 98-5’s MixFest might have a twelve-year history, but with only five acts, Saturday’s show at the Bank Of America Pavilion featured the sparsest lineup since 1994. Quantity isn’t everything, though, as indicated by comparing that year’s headliner (Huey Lewis and the News) with this year’s (Sheryl Crow), and even Saturday’s uneven show was strong enough to keep the tradition alive.
The heaviest lifting wasn’t performed by the men on the bill. Opening act the Pat McGee Band’s bland acoustic pop was met with plenty of screams, but McGee’s WB-ready looks couldn’t counteract a generally static stage presence to make him a particularly dynamic frontman. Gavin DeGraw seemed like a master showman in comparison, embracing a host of rock-star poses and clichés. If there were times when he appeared too cool to take any pleasure out of performing, he still provided a jolt of energy, and his band was more muscular and compelling than McGee’s, nailing the Stone Temple Pilots riff of “I Don’t Want To Be.”
Cyndi Lauper took the stage next, fulfilling the ’80s component of Mix 98-5’s playlist and announcing “Somebody help me, my pants are falling down” within seconds of arrival, a problem which at one point required two roadies to help her. Unfazed, she continued to sing the upbeat “Shine” and hopped into the crowd despite her still unresolved wardrobe issues. Still in strong, quirky voice after 20 years, she experimented with her most familiar material, converting “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” into ska, playing dulcimer on “All Through The Night” and “Time After Time” and introducing “She Bop” as “kind of a plaintive folk song, somewhere between Jewel and Dylan” before turning it into slow, moody psychedelia.
After a meager two-song solo set of acoustic bedroomy pop by Maine’s Howie Day, Sheryl Crow closed out the evening, and if she was the lineup’s requisite ’90s act, the five songs that she previewed from her upcoming Wildflower (which comes out on Tuesday) suggested that her decade-long hot streak shows no signs of flagging. Crow occasionally had a hard time making herself heard over her band, and “Every Day Is A Winding Road” lacked a bit of the snap of the original, but she was otherwise in fine form, playing hits like “Strong Enough,” “If It Makes You Happy” and the undervalued “Run, Baby, Run,” which she treated as the soul song that was bubbling under the surface the entire time.