02-12-1994
Bronx, New York, NY
Rosehill Gymnasium, Fordham University
with Alice Donut / Meat Puppets

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Review by Ira Fordham
BLIND MELON. College rockers on campus. With the Meat Puppets and Alice Donut at the Rosehill Gymnasium, Fordham University, the Bronx. Saturday night; the same bill comes to Roseland in Manhattan on Thursday. Between campus radio and the demographic power of young adults,rock and roll has long been an unofficial major of American higher education. Record companies big and small push their up-and-coming artists toward the sympathetic ears of students, hoping to start a career-launching buzz in an influential zone of impressionable consumers.

So it was thoughtful of Blind Melon, the quintet whose self-titled debut has, courtesy of MTV and college radio, sold more than 2 million copies, to fit some campus shows into its itinerary. But inside Fordham's airplane-hangar-cum-gymnasium, the appalling acoustics, rambunctious Saturday-night party crowd and the group's shapeless music coalesced into an amorphous blur that turned good intentions into a futile gesture.

On its album, Blind Melon dredges up good-time '70s guitar rock somewhere between the Steve Miller Band and Little Feat: bland, rhythmic party music with funky beats and a relaxing sense of familiarity. But frontman Shannon Hoon is a far more skillful showman than vocalist; beyond a limited range and wobbly pitch, his raspy passion leads the band toward the sound of Led Zeppelin. Live, the weakness of the band's material also became obvious: Songs were either short on pop structure or jerry-built from disconnected fragments, none of which discouraged the body surfers from having a mosh.

During a 65-minute show that included a brief intermission (which Hoon blamed on a thrown bottle) to reset the stage for an acoustic segment, Hoon's eccentric gestures and acrobatic energy made a stronger impression than the music. Although the shimmery restrained psychedelia of "I Wonder" was an early treat, most of the set - other than the hit, "No Rain" - was an indistinct blur. Or worse: The Velvet Underground's "Candy Says" was grotesquely refigured as a bluesy Faces rave-up.

Arizona's Meat Puppets, sporting a newly added rhythm guitarist and playing most of its newly released "Too High to Die" (London) album, has mostly tuned out the trippy acidelia that once made the veteran trio a punk-born Deadhead indulgence. In service of concise, precise songs (with spaced-out lyrics), Curt Kirkwood's lyrical guitar virtuosity and handsome tandem vocals with bassist brother Cris made the group's short set sweet.

Copyright 1994, Newsday Inc.

Ira Robbins, Blind Melon In a Blur At Fordham. , Newsday, 02-14-1994, pp 37.

credit: blindmelon.org


Blind Melon Setlist Rose Hill Gymnasium, Fordham University, New York, NY, USA 1994
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