TAVERN TUNES

“The thinking man’s Arcadia,” guitarist Sid Griffin dubbed Danny and Dusty at the beginning of their Saturday show at the Music Machine. Griffin’s comparison of the moonlighting members of Dream Syndicate, Green on Red and the Long Ryders with the moonlighting Duran Durans wasn’t too far-fetched, but it would’ve been more accurate if he’d called the group the drinking man’s Arcadia.

Green on Red’s Dan Stuart (the outfit’s co-leader with Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn) did most of the show with a mike in one hand and a Bud in the other as the band played its sentimental odes to tough hombres and beautiful losers--classic tavern tunes delivered with the bravado of a good-natured boozer and influenced by the kind of country and rock you’d find in a prime barroom jukebox.

The fact that Danny and Dusty shows are rare--Saturday’s might be their only 1986 performance--also gave the music a last-chance-to-dance fervor that often equaled anything these guys do in their regular jobs. True to form, their Music Machine happy hour was loose, raucous, celebrative, sloppy, consistently rousing, and pretty terrific from start to finish.