Pop Music Reviews : Lock-Up Lets Loose at Club Lingerie

As a Silverlake performance artist, Brian Grillo undulated through fish dances, writhed upside down in a loincloth from the rafters of a nightclub, and led campy neo-Motown revues. But as the frontman for Lock-Up, the funky Hollywood band that performed at Club Lingerie on Thursday, Grillo did a remarkable impersonation of a talented regular-guy rock singer.

It’s as if Eric Bogosian were actually to become a talk-show host or Ann Magnuson a heavy-metal queen, and did it better than the guys they were parodying. Thursday Lock-Up’s arty edges were limited to the fine Basquiat-esque totem-pole-style backdrop; this was rock ‘n’ roll.

Grillo belts like Huey Lewis or somebody, and dances a modified version of the Springsteen Shuffle. His band blasts tight Ohio Players riffs by way of Guns N’ Roses--hey, Lock-Up records for Geffen now--that sound more like decent commercial hard rock than like the atonal ecstasies of, say, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. People danced to this stuff, even some of the jaded industry crowd, and women screamed like Beatlemaniacs during the ballad.