Date: Fri 21-Mar-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A12

Quick Words:

concert-Commitments-Tuxedo

Full Text:

(rev The Commitments @Tuxedo Junction, 3/21/97)

Concert Review-

An Irish Band That Still Delights With American Soul

B Y S HANNON H ICKS

DANBURY - While New York City's St Patrick's Day parade may be the third

largest parade the city hosts annually, Connecticut Irishmen - those who

possess Irish blood as well as those who turn Irish for a day - are just as

prepared to celebrate the wearing of the green, and all things Irish, when

mid-March rolls around.

And so late last week, Danbury's Tuxedo Junction hosted a rather large band of

Irish musicians who helped raise Irish spirits for a long weekend. These

musicians - The Commitments - may hail from Ireland, but there is a decidedly

different twist in this band's performances to the bagpipes most Irish music

traditionally plays host to.

The Commitments play American soul. And they play it bloody well.

In 1991 a feature film came out of nowhere and became a sleeper hit. What

began as a simple film, entitled The Commitments , has continued into a

full-fledged career for a few of the Irish musicians featured in the film,

along with some fellow countrymen.

The Commitments is a film about a group of Dublin musicians, all but one in

their young 20s, who band together to form a music group. They were a bar band

with a twist. Seated in the heart of Ireland, the band's manager decided to go

for a decidedly American hook: soul. From James Brown to Aretha Franklin,

these young white Irish kids adopted a cultural genre their complete opposite.

"I'm black and I'm proud," became the mantra of each band member, and when it

was explained in the movie, it made a certain kind of warped sense. Whatever

sense or nonsense that train of thought carried, what The Commitments did have

was a good sound, and a grand stage presence - a male singer, three female

backing singers (one of which doubled as lead singer in some of the group's

best performances), a pianist, a sax player and a trumpet player, a drummer, a

guitarist and a bass player.

One of the best lines in the movie, in fact, refers to the band's size. When

Jimmy, the band's manager, is talking with a bartender/pub owner while the

band is setting up for a show, the bartender says, "When I hired a band, I

didn't know you were bringing me the whole bloody Philharmonic!"

The Commitments does present a large front, but the stage at Tuxedo Junction

held up just fine when the band showed up for a show last Thursday night. The

band is down to seven performers - gone is the trumpeter; the sax player does

double-time on a keyboard; and there are two female singers, one of whom

handles some lead vocals.

For the audience's part, those attending a Commitments show really need to

know ahead of time what they are in for. The Commitments may carry the same

label, but of the seven people onstage, only three are from the movie.

Kenneth McCluskey, who plays guitar and portrayed Derek Scully in the film,

still plays guitar for The Commitments. Dick Massey, who played the first

drummer in the film, Billy Mooney, who (in the film) quit the band because he

hated the lead singer, is back as the band's drummer. And Dave Finnegan, the

tough guy who began the film as the band's self-appointed bouncer and ended up

as its drummer, now handles the male lead vocals.

The remaining musicians on stage, although nameless, are not silent nor low on

the talent scale. Together, the seven members of The Commitments present a

tightly-choreographed spectacle - the girls are a lot of fun to watch, their

little dance routines for every song very late-`60s - and a good run through

some American soul that might have been missed by many had it not been

resurrected by the film of the same name.

Thursday's show re-created the feel of the six-year old film, from the songs

heard in the movie and on its original soundtrack (there is a second album of

songs "inspired by and from the soundtrack"), to additional songs of soul that

fit right in.

Lots of songs were familiar for their movie tie-in - "Take Me To The River,"

"Chain of Fools," "Treat Her Right," "Mustang Sally," "Never Loved A Man" and

"Try A Little Tenderness" among them - while others were new recordings of the

old soul treasure trove the band continues to dig into and release as

Commitments recordings in its homeland - "Look At That Girl," "Dark End of the

Street" and "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag."

The Commitments on the road is a trip into surreality: What exactly are we

watching here, anyway? On stage are musicians reenacting roles created in a

fictitious film - The Commitments , unlike the film of a few years back called

Backbeat , which chronicled the early days of the Beatles, is not based on a

real band.

Even The Commitments (initially all members of the film's cast) themselves

were surprised at the first suggestion of taking the show on the road. But on

the road The Commitments went, new members and all, and on the road they stay.

While the film band introduced itself before shows as "The world's hardest

working band," The Commitments - at $15 a pop - just may have become the

world's highest paid bar band.