Goo Goo Dolls Provide All The Fire On N.j. Stage

Concert ReviewAugust 28, 1999The Morning Call

All three bands on the Levi's Fuse '99 tour are riding high, if their success on the Billboard charts is a barometer.

But Texas retro-rockers Fastball and snappy Sugar Ray were barely lukewarm company to the blazing Goo Goo Dolls Wednesday at Camden's Sony-Blockbuster Entertainment Center.

About 12,000 fans, including lots of parents and kids, saw the Goo Goos command simply but powerfully on a drizzly night, led by John Rzeznik's mighty voice and Robby Takac's combustive guitar.

Fastball began the gig backed by a blue name banner proudly announcing "FASTBALL: Austin, TX.

Driven by drummer Joey Shuffield, the band plowed through eight songs in about half an hour, mostly from their breakthrough CD "All the Pain Money Can Buy." About halfway through, Fastball sauntered into its hit "The Way," without so much as a word about the career significance of the Tex-Mex tale. The fans roared in spite of a sound mix that favored raw noise over vocals.

Sugar Ray was fun to watch, hamming it up on a set designed to resemble an outdoor beach club, with a thatched roof bar and colored lights that dangled from above. The backdrop was a reproduction of the cover of its new CD "14:59," with men and women lounging in a pool of blue.

The California funk-rockers seemed right at home, and frontman Mark McGrath succeeded at his sexy strut thing in spite of the couple of broken ribs he said he suffered in Baltimore.

McGrath bantered casually with the audience, telling them to celebrate the lives of those who are not with us anymore when he introduced the hip-hop hit "Fly." He mocked the Backstreet Boys, with which Sugar Ray shares a fan base, at one point, singing the opening to "I Want It That Way," sparking boos.

But while a notch above Fastball, Sugar Ray's sound didn't sizzle. The Grammy-nominated "Every Morning" lacked luster, as did the Top 40-hit "Someday."

Someday the band may reach the level of the Goo Goo's, who arrived on stage virtually without props, but who saturated the stage for 1-1/2 hours.

The set began with the booming but melodic "Dizzy" from the double-platinum CD "Dizzy Up the Girl," a perfect vehicle to get Rzeznik's voice in tune.

The band streaked through about two dozen songs, reveling particularly in driving tunes from its early punk days. Rzeznik gracefully stepped back to give Takac center stage on screeching songs such as "January Friend."

Rzeznik had beseeched the crowd early in the concert "to be as loud and obnoxious as you can be," then took it in stride when some folks took him up on it.

A fight erupted during "Iris" and Rzeznik stopped mid-ballad. He yelled at them for "f.. ing up my big moment" and told a cheap joke about Ricky Martin's sexuality to help "defuse the tension." Rzeznik finished the song gracefully, showing the professional he has become.

His mama would have been proud, except for maybe when he and Takac signed off by throwing their guitars and mikes through a video screen.

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