rebel waltz
A report from the Joe Strummer tour.
Joe Strummer's live show at the Worcester Palladium tonight was great fun, moreso for the atmosphere than for the music. Unlike Boston's elegant Roxy, where Strummer played during his 1999 U.S. tour, the Palladium is a huge, cement hole carved from a side of the Worcester Centrum stadium. Needless to say, the acoustics of the place rendered much of what the band played an echoing roar. The 70-foot high walls were an ugly greenish-blue in the places where the paint had not yet peeled off, exposing bare concrete. The dim lighting, cheap theater seats held together with tape, and towering double balcony gave the impression of a rundown Eastern European theater, collapsing under its own weight.
I arrived a few minutes before Strummer took the stage, and found a seat in the balcony among a bunch of guys who looked more like they belonged at a fraternity reunion or working for an accounting firm than at a performance by a veteran of the 1970s punk movement. The packed crowd on the floor below quickly became a launching pad for fan after fan to body-surf from the audience up to the stage during every song. On several occasions, there were up to half of dozen members of the audience on the stage with the band dancing around, standing there looking stupid, or attempting to pose for photos with Joe while he sang. One girl popped up onto the stage during a rendition of the Clash's 'Armagideon Time,' danced around for a couple of minutes, then grabbed a tambourine and played for the rest of the song. On 'Police On My Back,' a bald guy with a great voice and an energetic, mohawked kid sang the choruses of the song with Joe Strummer at his microphone.
After the obligatory encores, the band finished the show with a version of the Ramones' 'Blitzkreig Bop' joined by everyone in the audience. It was 1977 all over again.
12.10.2001 © ljr