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Taken from 77square (Sep 28, 2009)
Michael Franti & Spearhead heat up Wisconsin Union Theater
by KATJUSA CISAR - The Capital Times
Michael Franti & Spearhead performing at the Fox Theater
in Oakland, Ca. on Feb. 7, 2009.
Photo by: BROOKE DUTHIE |
In the matter of a couple of wet hours Sunday, fall came to Madison. But while the car-denting hailstorm rained down with a season-changing vengeance, inside the Wisconsin Union Theater Michael Franti brought a hot island dance party to life.
He and his band Spearhead performed in front of a backdrop painted with a tropical street and beach. As the lights came up at the top of his set, they also revealed a pair of oversized sneakers the size of a beanbag chair hanging off a telephone wire that stretched from one side of the stage to the other. Throughout the show, the lights morphed the street scene from throbbing rave to -- during "The Sound of Sunshine" -- a particularly effective sunset/moonrise sequence.
During Trevor Hall's opening set, the shoes hung covered in a tarp and mysterious. A lukewarm Franti knock-off with better guitar skills, Hall invoked the spirit of a college quad drum circle to the refrain of lyrics like, "Singing Om Shakti, Om Shakti, Om!" (Somewhere, Shiva is rolling her third eye.)
Where Hall's performance came off as studied, Franti shines with a freespirited ease and lyrical authenticity. He immediately got people on their feet when he bounded onstage (barefoot, of course) with the show-opening "Everybody Ona Move," mixed with a few lines of "Billie Jean" and a pretty impressive moonwalk across the stage. Franti's dancing is completely uninhibited, to the point that he at times looked a bit foolish on stage, but it only makes him more endearing.
What he lacks vocally -- his otherwise full and smooth voice sometimes sounded off-key and ill-fitted to the melodies -- he made up for with a palpable warmth and contagious goodwill onstage.
His ace band Spearhead held the show together musically, and Franti brought them into the spotlight for many well-crafted and tight duets. On "Everyone Deserves Music," guitarist Dave Shul teased a hiccuping guitar line over Carl Young's fret-dancing bass solo. On "Is Love Enough," Manas Itiene nearly upstaged Franti with his athletic solo and comfortable, pitch-perfect voice.
The age-diverse audience danced along with abandon. One woman whipped around so vigorously that I feared she might dislocate a joint. The most fun of all to watch were the kids. A couple of Abigail Breslins in matching "I (heart) MF" T-shirts bopped in the aisle, squealed in delight at the flashing lights and sang along with nearly every lyric.
Franti matched the audience's enthusiasm by bringing up three lucky poeple from the crowd onstage to play guitar during "I Got Love for You," a song he wrote when his 21-year-old son embarked on a cross-country bus ride ("In the back of a Greyhound bus you can be who you are"). Grounded in its subject and soaring with feeling, it's one of the best songs he performed all evening.
He sent the crowd off into the new autumn chill with his sunny radio hit, "Say Hey (I Love You)," while some fans in the balcony unfurled a tie-dyed bedsheet with "Power to the peaceful 2009" on it.
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