So, I know your questions already, and I intend to answer them. (1) Can they still sing? (2) Are they still hot? (3) Which was the better band? (4) Whose material holds up better after all this time? Not necessarily in that order.
Actually, the answer to all four is "Marty Markowitz", Brooklyn's official Seaside Summer Concerts prima donna, who does not hesitate to use the platform as, well, a platform, for friends who are running for office. At least he didn't use it as an opportunity to promote the Atlantic Yards boondoggle. Or did I miss that part?
In any case, once Marty and various people who were there for political playdates decided to vacate the premises, and after The Donnas, a decent rock band to whom I will not devote much attention (having already paid attention to the prima donnas) finished their set, in this 40th year since the iconic Woodstock gathering, Asser Levy park turned into Classic Rock alley as Pat and Debbie plied their trade. Thus I return to my original questions.
Okay, who can still sing? That's a trick question, since only one of them could really ever sing. Or, if that's unfair, let's put it this way: Pat Benatar can sing. She can belt. She can croon, she can wail, she can scream. She can hit the notes she needs to hit with the tone she wants to hit them. She's 56 and I'm sure she knows what she can't do that she used to do, but there isn't much that comes across to an audience as lacking. Deborah Harry surprised me. She was never a brilliant vocalist, but she could sing and she could put a song over in such different styles as the guttural "One Way or Another" and the disco-slick "Heart of Glass". On Thursday night, though, she started off very weak, sounding like she didn't have much left of what was only a modest vocal talent to begin with. But as the set moved along she seemed to get more and more confident, until towards the end she was letting loose like the punk diva she used to be. So, the answer to question one? Overall, Pat Benatar wins the vocal contest. But don't rule Debbie out just yet, she can rise to the occasion even if it takes her a few tunes to get going.
So what about the boys in the band? Let's start with this: Chris Stein should not be too concerned that Neil "Spyder" Giraldo blows him away as a performer, technician, and creative player, because he blows away most guitarists who are not in the guitar hero pantheon. Indeed I suspect he is more impressive than quite a few of Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time - but then, so are a lot of the guitarists who never made it into that ridiculous list. His sound did a lot to make Pat Benatar the hard rock queen she was, and he was in fine form at this concert. One kind of guitar "hero" plays a lot of notes and bangs out power chords. Another kind of guitar hero plays one note, or better yet, no notes, just picking away on a dampened string, but makes the entire sound and rhythm of a song revolve around what he does. The latter is the kind of guitar player Spyder is. When he plays two notes he could be an orchestra. It's all done with effects and amplification and guitar controls, which makes it look and sound easy, but it ain't. And for the few who have mastered it, it is incredibly effective. I should add that Blondie has another guitarist in their present incarnation, and he appeared to be doing as much or more work than Stein. It was hard to tell who was doing what from where I was, but Paul Carbonara seemed to be very good, if not necessarily hewing to the erstwhile punk sound of the band.
Okay, drummers. Clem Burke of Blondie is not a drummer, he's a freakin' machine gun, and he's got the band's back. Last drummer I saw play like that was Corky Laing. Or not even. Burke was the force that kept every song driving forward, no matter how subtle it was. Myron Grombacher (I assume that's who Pat's drummer was - never heard an announcement) was perfectly decent, but if I were a small craft and I saw Burke coming I'd cede the right of way quickly. And that's about it for comparisons - neither band is prominently bass or keyboard driven (though there are important keyboard parts in some of Blondie's material), and those personnel are not all original band members, so I will pass on it and move onto the next critical question.
Of these two rock powerhouses of the 1980's, whose material holds up better after all these years? Tough one, though I know the answer. (Right, modesty, modesty - I know what my answer would be. See, I can do it... against my will.) Some of Pat Benatar's hits I still find very powerful, particularly "Hell Is for Children" (maybe her best performance of the night) and "Heartbreaker". These, especially the first, came off as enduring rock anthems beyond the limits of style and era. But most of her material never really moved me beyond the average top 40 song, in which area she had tons of competition from the standard 80's FM hitmakers - Foreigner, Journey, Styx, Rush, Steve Miller, et al. "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", "Love Is a Battlefield", etc. just kind of sat there in my consciousness as okay songs floating around in a decade's worth of okay music. (And I have been known in less charitable moods to refer to okay music as "garbage", which may be a little harsh... or not. Okay, modesty period is over.) Blondie, on the other hand, I thought of as a kind of fallen angel of post-punk, but where they fell was not necessarily all bad, similar to the Police. (Cheap Trick is an example of a former punk outfit that had gone way too far toward the Journey end of the spectrum to interest me much.)
After this concert I must say that if I didn't know these two bands beforehand, I would be running to the store to buy Blondie albums. Okay, maybe "album" - Parallel Lines has almost all their most popular songs, a killer album that has sold 12 million copies and made them the band they're now known as. But what actually impressed me the most was how much I liked the Blondie material that I had not heard before. Which is plenty, since they released eight albums over a period of about 27 years, and I haven't heard much more than Parallel Lines, a little bit of their early material and a couple of later hits. Now I'm inspired to discover some of the Blondie material that I sort of ignored in favor of more hardcore punk and a variety of other stuff.
Okay, last question. How can I be tactful about this? By not discussing it at all, probably. Such sound judgment has never been my style, though. So first of all, Pat Benatar was never an icon of sensuality for me, so not too likely that she is now, even with her long blonde (yes!) locks. (Will the real Pat Benatar please stand up?) Joan Jett could have tied me up and abused me, as long as she wore those black leather pants and other emo gear. But Pat always seemed a little too girl-next-doorish by my lights. Deborah Harry, on the other hand, was everybody's idea of a sex symbol, and did not go to great lengths to hide it. Which brings me to the subject of reggae, and the movies. Why? "Because the harder they come, the harder they fall, one and all!"
I do wish they would improve the sound at Seaside. It may be okay from up close, but from the outer banks where they keep the riffraff (oh, I get it riff raff, rock concert, OMG) it pretty much sucks, both in terms of quality and volume. The volume may be a compromise to keep the neighbors happy, but the quality can't be. Compared to the sound at Celebrate Brooklyn (see my next review) it is like listening through wax paper. Hey Marty, maybe for some of those hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks you favor for Downtown Brooklyn and Atlantic Yards developers you could get one of them to pony up for a decent sound system?
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