Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
April 8, 1999
Afternoon delight?
Those 4pm gigs in a university field are always tricky, even when you've got opinions
You don't need to read the runes, conult an astrologer or check the innards of a chicken to predict that New Radicals' introduction to Atlantan should have BEWARE stamped right across it. If anyone knows anything about the gig they're not letting on. Certainly not Gregg Alexander, the bulet-headed driving force behind his band's impossible to ignore introductory single, 'You get what you give', and the lashings of similarly anxious yet stirring millennial pop found on the debut album, 'Maybe you've been brainwashed too'. 'I guess we're doing some kind of show at 4 o'clock', is the best he can come up with.
The feeling that it isn't going to be ine of those days when the gods are smiling increases when the bus carrying Alexander and cohorts loses itself amid the verdant back roads on its way to the Emory campus. By the time they arrive at today's place of work it's already 3.45 pm and backstage things are getting a bit testy.
Twenty minutes later they find themselves
confronting a patch of green not much bigger than a football
pitch called McDonough Field. It's surrounded by wholesome
looking faculty buildings and it's peppered by few hundred
students (strictly no outsiders or alcohol) who are here to soak
up the sun, flirt, pose, jaw, play some frisbee and maybe see the
headlining GooGoo Dolls. The support act seelm to come a long way
down the agenda. They've got half an hour to turn these kids
around. Thankfully the tornadoes that are currently doing their
worst across the Midwest haven't got this far yet. That'll be the
silver lining, then.
'You get what you give' might well be one of those rare, sainted songs that instantly gives the impression of always having been there; a strident wake-up call that's all knowing pop hook. It s, however, just a start. After all, little more than si months ago New Radicals didn't even exist as a fully functioning unit. Nobody knows much about them still. Yet that's all changing, not least because the 27-year-old- Alexander has plenty to get off his chest and is more than willing to shoot from the lip. He's already had a pop at label mates Beck, Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson in his lyricsM enough to have said label branding him 'a liability'. Yet in conversation he's more earnest than arrogant; a long, gangling streak of almost boyish enthusiasms and fears.
'I ran away from Detroit when I was 16 and headed
for Los Angeles', he explains. 'It was naïve,
make-summer-last-forever, sleeping on beaches, sleeping on
couches kind od stuff. I had my demos. I got thrown a record
contract. It was like, Bring that freak in here and let's see
what we can do with him. I made a record in (1989's Michigan
Rain) that I like just as much as the new one. Jimmy Iovine (Tom
Petty, U2) produced it. It appeared on A&M. About three weeks
later Polygram or some other Norwegian giant bought the company
so it was immediately dead.
'Then I made another a couple of years later (Intoxifornication)that came out on Epic around the time of grunge. Again I wasn't given the chance to have my songs heard on the radio because it didn't sound like Bush or Pearl Jam. I wasn't into grunge at all. It didn't ring true, all that turning up guitars real loud and screaming as a substitute for having something to say: like, I'm angry and I'm white. Well, there's a lot bigger injustices out there than the trials and tribulations the bands on the American Alternative Top 20 charts have to go through. There are real problems in a country like this. You can see dysfunction when you watch something like The Ricki Lake Show. On one hand, it's a disgusting atrocity of humanity. On the other it's a good mirror for what we're creating for the next 20 or 30 years'.
So after two false starts Alexander spent the bulk of his twenties outside the music business looking in. Until now, that is. Not that he's exactly enarmoured with the machine.
'It's not like it's a club and you come inside
and suddenly your life is all dandy. That was one of the good
lessons I learned when I was still in my teens; you can't count
on the powers that be'.
Finally given a platform, he's determined to use it and, seemingly, put himself on a collison course with cord-fed Middle America and anyone else who doesn't want to see the wood for the trees.
'The problem with 90's rock'n'roll pop culture is that it's all turned into a pastiche, all irony. It's basically style over substance saying nothing. That's not to say I'm saying anything earth shatteringly relevant, just basic human truths. If you have any point of view on anything it leaves you open to mob rule criticism. That goes for people right across the board who want to open up a dialogue about anything, whetherit's race issues, the environment or changing the political status quo. With the album being called 'Maybe you've been brainwashed too' and with there being some human sub-text to it, the band is going to do what it can, but, because we have no allies, we're not so naïve to think we're going to make any serious dent here'.
This is all good, fighting talk. Unfortunately, a balmy, collegiate Alanta afternoon is hardly the time or location to judge whether New Radicals can deliver on such promises live. Everything seems to be in place. What they need now is a few more folk to rally round the flag. It's quite clear that the crowd here don't quite know what to make of them. Lack of familiarity with the songs doesn't help; not that there's anything intrinsically tricky about the music. The gap is more one of dance culture literacy: the band have it, those watching don't. It makes for a short but invigorating clash of wills and expectations.
After a phoney false start, the six of them
launch into the strutting 'Made this whole joint for you' with
Alexander doing his best to hide behind his signature beenie hat
and sounding like Prince when he was still Prince. A quick nod in
the direction of 'Sympathy for the devil' ushers in the loose
sanctified soul of 'Mother we just can't get enough'. Clanging
keyboards, wristy guitar and the uninhibited wailing of Danielle
Brisebois make it significantly harder and better then the studio
version as Alexander tests out his falsetto and sits on the floor
rather than showing he's not the world's slickest mover.
'We figured we'd do this for our urban friends who've showed up today. It's a little bit of a rap song', he deadpans by way of introducing 'I don't wanna die anymore'. Sure enough, there' some talking in tongues and guff about 'rocking the party that rocks the party' amid much finger jabbing and a chorus built of granite. They finish with the one song everybody knows, but not before Alexander has incited the crowd to 'tear up some grass like a bunch of animals so that the authorities will never allow a show to be put on here again'. He gets his wish, possibly more than he bargained for. Great clumps of turf are hurled at the stage. He celebrates by crawling into the crowd; a reaction at last. Tomorrow it's Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Surely, it can't be any harder than this.
~ Peter Kane ~
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