Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde looks great, right? But don’t you dare take a picture of her else you’ll risk being reprimanded by her — mid-song, even. Photos by Mateo Leyba.
First, a tangent.
Read any review from current slate of shows and you’ll see references to how great Chrissie Hynde looks as she struts the length of the stage in her torn jeans, tailor-cut jacket and high-heeled boots. And Hynde knows she looks great – that bangs-in-her eyes look of tousled freedom and careless abandon.
That said, why is Hynde such a freak about getting her picture taken? The Pretenders allowed a certain number of professional photographers into the on Tuesday night to capture the band’s performance — and you’ll see Mateo Leyba’s terrific pictures complimenting this review. But anytime an amateur shutterbug attempted to take a picture with their own cell phone or pocket camera, they got reprimanded by condescending security guards — or Hynde herself!
At least twice during the show, Hynde interrupted whatever she was doing – singing a song, telling a story – to verbally tell various people in the first couple rows of audience-left to “stop doing that.” I’ve seen a lot of odd, primadonna, overzealous behavior from rock stars over the years, but this was something new. Hynde interrupted the concert she and her band were presenting for a couple thousand fans to reprimand a single dude with a camera. And thatap petty and small and ridiculous, especially for somebody with Hynde’s experience.
The security staff’s treatment of such people hardly engendered good will either. I noted a couple people get yelled at by an excited security guard, and as I was taking notes on my Blackberry, a staffer approached me and snapped, “Stop taking pictures.” I told him I hadn’t taken any and that I was taking notes. He looked at me sternly and told me that he was positive he’d seen me take a couple pictures with my camera. And then I showed him that it was a phone. And he said he didn’t care. “Stop taking pictures!”
If I had taken a picture, I might have owned up to it. But if I had taken a picture, I surely wouldn’t have blown it out in this forum. Let it be said that you shouldn’t tangle with the Paramount staff. They know when you are sleeping. They know when you’re awake. And they know when you’re taking pictures with your cell phone at a rock show – even when you’re not taking pictures.
Now, some thoughts on the night’s music.
I really dig the Pretenders’ new record, “Break Up the Concrete.” Itap a western mash-up of punk-powered rockabilly. A lot of it is fast and hard and unpredictable and twangy — edgy, even. The group started the Tuesday show strong with the new “Boots of Chinese Plastic,” the clear stand-out track on the record, and the audience reacted accordingly. The song makes standing still impossible, and most of the theater’s ground level stood well into the fourth or fifth song.
The problem with the new record is that the band has declared war on itself. The group built its name on ’80s hits that include “Brass in Pocket,” “Don’t Get Me Wrong” and “Talk of the Town” – era-defining songs that are familiar to all. The sad truth of those songs is that they haven’t aged so well. The wrinkles are showing, and they lack the urgency that once sprang so naturally from them.
Oddly the band’s “Back on the Chain Gang” – from 1984’s “Learning to Crawl” – remains a timeless nugget of pop goodness, with Hynde’s snarl bringing everything together.
But many of the older songs don’t fare so well in concert these days, especially when played against the raging “Chinese Plastic” or the weepy new ballad “Love is a Mystery,” a song that backed up drummer Martin Chambers’ claim (in this Denver Post story) that the band is playing at a higher level than ever before.
The crowd loved nearly everything that was thrown at them on Tuesday, standing up for the familiar rockers and sitting down for some of the new material and the slower stuff. But the Pretenders are a heritage act that needs to be held to higher standards. Hynde wrote a tremendous new record of material, finding a muse somewhere in her native America. Now she needs to infuse some of her older tracks with some new life.
Ricardo Baca is the pop music critic for The Denver Post and the executive director for the Denver Post Underground Music Showcase.
Mateo Leyba is a staff artist for The Denver Post and a regular contributor to Reverb.
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