What a Trip! Smithereens Take Audience Back to the 1960s

What a wonderful thing the Smithereens accomplished at the Coach House on Monday night: They put high school back into rock ‘n’ roll.

The New Jersey band was clipping along midway through a solid but hardly remarkable set when something happened, some leap of inspired memory that let a whole lost world become vivid and immediate. It was like something out of Proust, where a commonplace thing--the aroma of French pastry dipped in tea--puts the author in a mood for remembrance, opening a mental crack through which one of the 20th Century’s greatest novels gradually unfolds.

It is impossible to pinpoint exactly what it was that allowed the last hour of the Smithereens’ show to unfold as a rock ‘n’ roll masterpiece. (Monday’s concert was the first of three performances in a sold-out stand at the Coach House that ends tonight--the band also plays Friday at the Universal Amphitheatre.) But it may have been something as simple as a whiff of an old, remembrance-provoking melody line.

What rock fan’s memory wouldn’t be warmed by the lovely harpsichord solo from “In My Life” by the Beatles? Smithereen Mike Mesaros retraced that solo on his bass during a winsome rendition of “Blue Period.” Then, as he started the next song, “Blues Before and After,” Mesaros tossed off another recollection of mid-’60s Brit-pop bliss, the rumbling introduction to the Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon.” A little while later, during the same song, Smithereens singer Pat DiNizio wailed away on a feverish fuzz-tone guitar solo that sounded like something out of Cream’s “White Room.”

From that sequence of momentary remembrances of rock past arose a blazing, extended finish, a great leap backward in which the Smithereens transformed the Coach House into a high-school auditorium or gymnasium, circa 1968-69.

What Michael J. Fox did in fantasy in “Back to the Future,” the Smithereens did in the flesh. They jumped back in time, turning into the kids they must have been when they first fell in love with the rock ‘n’ roll of the Beatles, the Kinks and the other ‘60s groups that so obviously inspire their music--maintaining all the while the mature, honed skills they have acquired in their decade together as a band.

Listening to the Smithereens’ three albums, it is possible to complain with some justification that the band is too blatantly derivative of its sources (one might also say, though, that the Smithereens’ records prove that “derivative” doesn’t have to be a dirty word).

But what they did on stage dashed “derivative” to bits. The music the Smithereens played as they surged from peak to magnificent peak in songs like “Behind the Wall of Sleep,” “Only a Memory” and “Blood and Roses” wasn’t a derivation from great ‘60s rock. It was a complete recapturing of that music’s essence--irresistible melody colliding with irresistible force to unleash a transporting experience of the youthful zest and immediacy that are bound up in great rock.

In the process, the Smithereens hurtled right past another of the reasonable caveats against them: that DiNizio’s songs of obsessive love are too constantly dark, and a little shopworn in their recasting of old, familiar pop situations--too many jilted lovers sitting depressed in lonely rooms, not enough new or deeply personalized twists of language that might make an old story fresh.

As the Smithereens delved back into rock’s essence, the plots and words and moods in their songs virtually ceased to matter. What mattered was the sheer intensity of feeling that underlies the lyrics, and the catchy melodies and hammering riffs, played with unfettered enthusiasm, that carry those lyrics along. These were no longer songs about losing love and falling into depression. They were songs about reveling in the ability to feel things intensely and to translate that feeling into rock ‘n’ roll.

The show looked the way it sounded. Mesaros leaped and raced across the stage with uncaged excitement. Sometimes he made a downward swinging motion with his shoulders as he played, as if he wished his bass would turn into a sledgehammer so that he could pound the beat that much harder. DiNizio, mild-mannered and quietly solicitous toward the crowd all evening, would suddenly emit a rough cave-man holler-- aaarrrgghhh!-- during or after a song because nothing else could come close to letting out the energy surging inside him. Lead guitarist Jim Babjak, subdued early on, became awash with glee as the show gained momentum and he fell to attacking his instrument a la Pete Townshend. Babjak obtained exhilaratingly Who-ish sonic results, playing deliciously dirty Townshend-esque licks that sounded like plutonium-enriched Chuck Berry.

In one of those nice instances of enjoyment and fellowship that seem to crop up when the music is completely right, Babjak at one point jumped to join DiNizio on a single microphone, Beatles-style, barked an exuberant harmony, then gave DiNizio a pat on the shoulder to punctuate his complete pleasure with the moment. The bespectacled drummer, Dennis Diken, was splendid all night--always crisply on the beat or filling in the rhythmic gaps with concise, inventive fills. He also contributed strong harmony singing behind DiNizio’s sturdy, nasal-husky leads.

“Rock is a celebration,” DiNizio said during the second of three encores as he introduced “The World We Know” in honor of the late Del Shannon (Shannon sang backup on the Smithereens’ 1988 recording of the song). “When we remember our good friend, Del Shannon, (we should) celebrate rather than regretting.”

After 1989, with its dismaying parade of profiteers selling ‘60s rehash, the Smithereens’ concert offered a reaffirmation of faith that the ‘60s really did matter. The show was a triumph of memory, which is the inspired retrieval of enduring essences from the past, over nostalgia, which is the escapist yearning for a mere repetition of the familiar. If that’s not cause to celebrate, what is?