Mellencamp’s six-piece ensemble took the stage, including violinist Lisa Germano, back in the fold for the first time in almost 30 years. Mercifully, it finally came to an end with sirens wailing and emergency lights flashing. There came a point where you wondered if things could get ugly in the audience. Two clips into the extended montage, folks started yelling for the show to start. Regardless, the crowd was in no mood for Movie Night. Then, as the lights came down, an exhausting ode to tour sponsor Turner Classic Movies kicked in on a big screen: a 30-minute stretch of black-and-white clips showcasing a half-dozen vintage films: “The Fugitive Kind,” featuring Marlon Brando, a guitar-playing drifter, “The Misfits,” “Giant,” “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “On the Waterfront” and “Hud.” It appeared the selection of specific clips, particularly with Brando, was a tie-in to the false persona foisted upon Mellencamp when he first broke nationally in the late 1970s. Given a big chunk of attendees were in their 50s, 60s and 70s, there was some fear that half the crowd would fall asleep by the time the show started. 8), the third show of the “Live and In Person” tour, a massive 76-date route running through June 24. Fans knew they were in for something completely different heading to their seats at Ovens Auditorium to the strains of “Blue Tail-Fly” (Jimmy Crack Corn), part of a Burl Ives greatest hits medley serving as the warm-up music. That theme was on display during his return to the stage in Charlotte this week (Feb. John Mellencamp has forged his own path as a performing artist with a ‘screw you’ attitude ever since the music industry tried to pigeonhole him as cool “Johnny Cougar” almost 50 years ago, rebel without a cause. (Don Muret/Staff) Movie Night? No, it’s a rock concert He didn’t even make mention of a brand new album, “Orpheus Rising,” he’d released the day before though he did play one of its songs, the brutally topical “The Eyes of Portland.GROOVIN’ WAS GROOVIN’: John Mellencamp and his band hits the stage in Charlotte in the early stages of a lengthy theater tour running through late June. The stage represented a working film set with costumed mannequins and Kleig lights but sounded more like a roadhouse as Mellencamp and the band grinded into a high-octane “John Cockers” from his 2009 album “Life, Death, Love and Freedom.” Mellencamp - his voice full of cigarette-stained rasp - promised “some songs you know, some songs you don’t know,” but the 18-song set was dominated by the former, as the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer paraded some of his biggest hits. Mellencamp and his cracking six-member band did just that at the Masonic, throwing in just enough rock artiste touches to demonstrate how much he’s grown from the gleeful rowdy who hit big with “Hurts So Good” in 1982 but, at 71, still hasn’t grown all the way up yet - and doesn’t really want to, ever.Īnd the resulting hour and 50 minutes, his first metro area show in eight years, lived up to Mellencamp’s expressed desire at the beginning of the show that “by the end of the evening…we have created a nice musical community where we can all have fun.”Ĭoming on after a lengthy and ineffectual film - that was booed by the sold-out crowd at one point - touting tour sponsor the TCM channel and the connection between its vintage movies and some of his paintings, Mellencamp was vintage James Dean himself in a one-piece black work coverall and slicked-up hair. Pretty high-minded for a guy who dropped enough F-bombs to fill a gross (or more) of swear jars.įorty-seven years on since his debut album, the Indiana singer, songwriter and painter still puts on a rock ‘n’ roll show of the roof-raising variety. Signs discreetly taped on the walls of the Masonic Temple Theatre explained that John Molenkamp’s show there on Saturday night, June 17, “respects theater etiquette.”
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