With his association with Parliament/Funkadelic (P-Funk), star-shaped diamond encrusted shades, custom-made "Space Bass" and pervasive sense of oddball humor, it's easy to take Bootsy Collins (aka William Earl Collins) at face value—until you look at his resume. Collins' first gig was at the tender age of 17 as the bassist of James Brown's original JBs. (He played on "Super Bad" and "Talking Loud and Saying Nothing.") After joining George Clinton's P-Funk empire, he broke out with Stretching Out in Bootsy's Rubber Band (Warner Brothers Records, 1976) which not only became a hit and grabbed him a Grammy nomination but also separated him from the rest of the P-Funk pack (including The Horny Horns and The Brides of Funkenstein).
When he wasn't dropping more hit records, he was working with DeeeLite ("Groove is in the Heart"), The Soup Dragons (Hydrophonic on Polygram Records), Talib Kweli ("Internet Connection"), Herbie Hancock ("Perfect Machine"), Doc Watson and Del McCourey (a fusion of bluegrass and funk billed as The Groove Grass Boys), and Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison (the bird flipping dance single "Five Minutes" which was edited/sampled from Ronald Reagan's infamous "Five Minutes" speech and credited to Bonzo Goes to Washington). And, yes, he did write the Cincinnati Bengals' theme song—"Fear Da Tiger"—and continues to head up The Bootsy Collins Foundation which aims to put musical instruments into the hands of underprivileged children. So who is this guy, really?
As he said when he hit the Cubby Bear's stage, "It's Bootsy baay-beeee..." Clad in a gold lame duster and matching crushed top hat, the man was everything that I remembered from the last time I saw him (1980) and none of what I could have imagined. Yes, there were old-school funk workouts played with such brutal force that you wanted to forget about synthesized club music entirely ("Bootzilla," "Roto-Rooter," "Hollywood Squares") but there were also unexpected surprises; a relevant and timely take—particularly for the LGBT community—of Sly Stone's "Everyday People" and the P-Funk anthem "One Nation Under A Groove."
But where any has-been rocker could prop up the hits like tattered soggy laundry, Collins went for the kill. "Body Slam" was still slinky, sexy and playful while the slow-cooking mash-up of "I'd Rather Be with You" and "Munchies for your Love" smelled of naughtiness and sincerity. How sincere is Collins' lust? You couldn't deny after "Munchies" that the man was undoubtedly responsible for innumerable babies being conceived or that he was doing it long before R. Kelly was out of diapers.
If seeing Bootsy after all this time was reminiscent of re-bonding with a long lost friend, the double bill of Cheap Trick and Aerosmith was a revelation, for better and worse. Cheap Trick, of course, is the little band from Rockford who broke the bank. Unfussy, blunt and with personality to burn,it's always been the ultimate four-to-the-floor straight-up rock 'n' roll band. And that's the point: Cheap Trick doesn't feature "stars" or celebrities and, like the most legendary of bands—The Who, The Beatles, The Rumour, the '76 version of Fleetwood Mac,and The Attractions—each member brings an essential component to the mix. So is the band as vital as it was when Live at Budokan (Epic Records, 1978) hit the planet like an asteroid? Oh sweet Jesus, yessssss...
The opener, "Hello There," killed any doubt from the jump. Between bassist Tom Petersson and drummer Daxx Neilsen's concrete-slamming thump, guitar god Rick Neilsen's fleet fingers and Robin Zander's otherworldly bark, Cheap Trick remains as a rock 'n' roll band made for arenas. Zander hasn't lost an inch to age and, though he's never been a dancer or acrobat, he still delivers fire, desperation, coyness and humor through the most thrilling voice in rock. Neilsen—tamping down the scissor kicks and goofy leers—kept his focus on his hands and fingers. When he wasn't ripping brain-bending guitar solos or flinging guitar picks into the crowd, he was cracking wise with the good-natured smirk of a 10-year-old caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Mixing the hits ("I Want You to Want Me," "The Flame," "Ain't That A Shame") with old favorites ("Elo Kiddies," "I Know what I Want," "California Man"), Cheap Trick was all about the business end of rock 'n' roll. If the enormity of a nearly sold-out United Center or the fact that they were an opening act with no hit records in over a decade seemed intimidating, it didn't matter. Cheap Trick may have been professional and they may have rocked, but they didn't merely do that. They rocked, they entertained and they thrilled the bejesus out of this crowd. After all this time, Cheap Trick is still the bomb.
This was not a good thing for Aerosmith. As a band that has weathered ups, downs, mayhem onstage and off, drugged-out drama, oddball comebacks and adolescent horniness for decades, it's a wonder that Aerosmith—particularly, vocalist Steven Tyler—can bring it at all. Yes, they are the best-selling U.S. rock band of all time (150 million albums sold worldwide) but they were back only because Tyler is suddenly "hot" for co-judging on American Idol and dropping an unintelligible memoir. Tyler's flashpoint celebrity has reduced Aerosmith from being an institution to merely his platform.
This, well, sucks because I wanted to like them and be thrilled, even half as much as Cheap Trick or Bootsy. As a 16-year-old closeted Black nerd trapped in a Southern boarding school, the swagger of "Walk this Way" was everything that I needed and nothing that Camden, S.C., wanted. "Walk" is the ultimate dick-swinging teen-boy anthem with its clarion riff, goofy lyrics ("You ain't seen nuthin' 'til you're down on the muffin wit yo feet flyin' up in the air...") and faked braggadocio. What's sad to say is that although the band and that record have held up, Tyler hasn't aged very well.
Yes, guitar guru Joe Perry, Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer were as solid at the United Center but they were better than what Tyler deserved. Hitting the stage in a white ensemble topped with a floppy hat and scarves aplenty, Tyler flopped and wiggled like a cracked-up D-list drag queen the day after a lingerie fire sale at Victoria's Secret. Face-fucking video cameras and humping the stage like a spastic Raggedly Ann doll while throwing open the abyss of his mouth with the exaggerated fury of Krakatoa, Tyler looked like a frenzied, pitiable clown. Mick Jagger can do this shtick on an arena stage and pull the fans in the nosebleed seats into his game but Tyler sure can't.
So did any of this take? Not so much. The opener, "Draw the Line," had punch and drive thanks to Perry's coiled attack, but "Love In An Elevator" thudded like mud-filled balloons. A new song, "Oh Yeah," was unmemorable slop and I doubt if it will sound any better when the band's Music From Another Dimension hits stores in November.
Bootsy and Cheap Trick never lost sight of what they were doing on stage, which was to entertain their audience. Tyler's self-involved freak-out was more like something that an overripe frat boy would do behind a locked bathroom door with his shorts down around his ankles, a dab of Dippity Doo in his palm and a cumpled copy of his big brother's Hustler Magazine in his lap. It certainly wasn't pretty but I guess it's great that Tyler, 61, had fun and we got to watch.
