POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Mother’s Finest Showcases Anger in Roxy Show

Remember all those barriers against black rock bands that were supposed to come tumbling down after Living Colour made it big a few years ago?

Well, apparently they’re still intact. The veteran black rock band Mother’s Finest, which played the Roxy on Monday, will testify to that. This band has been banging on the door of rock success since 1976 without any luck.

Lack of talent isn’t the problem. There aren’t too many white hard-rock bands out there that play better. In its scorching set at the Roxy, the sextet played blistering, headbanging rock laced with funk and underscored with buzz saw guitars. Imagine Tina Turner singing with Motley Crue and you’ll get a feel for this band’s music.

Singer Joyce Kennedy, sporting a mane of blond hair, probably sounds too much like Turner for her own good. She also spends too much time at full blast, not modulating her vocals to fit the lyrics. A few times, though, she was on the mark. She pumped up “Power,” an homage to female strength, and cannily switched to her Aretha Franklin mode on the dramatic ballad “Cry Baby.”

Mother’s Finest is heavily into social protest, pushing for change on songs like “Crack Babies” and “The Wall.” The band is also pushing another kind of change, broadcasting its bitterness about what it sees as radio’s bias against black rockers--evident in the sarcastic title of its current album, “Black Radio Won’t Play This Record.”