DALLAS -- Just this year alone, I've already seen a ton of shows, but it's been a long while since I've seen a rock show, as in a concert that goes beyond the band standing there, you standing there, the band playing and you going home after they're done.
That's exactly what Canadian rock quartet Our Lady Peace didn't do Friday night at a sold-out Deep Ellum Live. As opposed to just a concert, this was a show -- band banners were draped on either side of the stage, a video screen showed flickering images of a car driving on a winding road in the middle of the night, a light show was so dazzling you couldn't see the band half the time and, below it all, silhouettes of kids crowd-surfing cut through the air, adding a layer of shadowy surrealism.
It was all very reminiscent of the mid-'90s, when alternative rock was at its commercial peak, Lollapalooza hadn't gone sour and rock concerts had as much to do with what was going on onstage as in the audience. Our Lady Peace is the torch carrier for that brand of music and that slice of time.
The group's currently riding on the success of its hit, Clumsy, an acoustic/electric-soft/hard-ballad/ rocker that sounds a whole lot like the Smashing Pumpkins, the group most people say Our Lady Peace rips off. And I'd have to agree: Same quiet oud dynamics. Same sandpapery-voiced singer. Same style of straightforward, no-frills- or-egos delivery. Even the same kind of engaging stage show.
But Friday night, it didn't seem to matter that everything Our Lady Peace played -- from its hit Clumsy to the more atmospheric Carnival to the meaty rocker Star Seed -- the Pumpkins put out in 1995.
Right now, kids have no Pumpkins, they have no Nine Inch Nails, they have no Ministry or Rage Against the Machine. These bands are either in the studio or in rehab, leaving us with half-hearted solo projects from onetime alt-rock heroes (Stone Temple Pilots' Scott Weiland and Alice in Chains' Jerry Cantrell) or meaningless fluff like Backstreet Boyz.
Rock and roll is all about artists revealing their pain at the expense of yours, and Our Lady Peace is just about the only rock band doing that right now, the only band that can make their fans react, whether it's starting a mosh pit or going to the library and checking out a book the band recommends. I'd say Pearl Jam's doing that, too, but Eddie Vedder gets mad when kids mosh, even though he used to do it when he was younger. Growing up sure does bite.
Malcolm Mayhew