Pop Music Review : Peter Wolf: Still Wired, if a Little Tired

One can’t quite picture Peter Wolf on a NordicTrac. Thin as a rail, scraggly black hair, pallid complexion, tiger-print shoes: No, this is the sort of fellow who, one senses, only stays in trim at the spotlight gym--leaping, dancing, gyrating, pole-vaulting off a microphone stand, pumping glass in the form of a Cuervo bottle onstage night after night.

So it’s understandable if Sunday night, after a 10-year hiatus from touring, the former J. Geils Band front man wasn’t in peak condition. At the Coach House, the 46-year old singer still had the manic tobacco-auctioneer-cum-disc-jockey spiel, still had the post-Jagger dance moves, and still had the distinctive band saw of a voice, but all were in somewhat diminished quantity when compared to his efforts of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Then, he easily was one of the best showmen in rock, bright but funky, commanding the stage with an abandoned kinetics and shouting soulfully through a decade when soul was in short supply.

Perhaps time is catching up with him; perhaps he’d blown himself out playing a party at Hollywood’s House of Blues the evening previous; perhaps, as other aging stars have learned, he does need that exercise machine to keep up. In any event, percentages have caught up a bit with the man who once claimed to give 110% of himself every night.

That’s no great fault. Even at 90%, Wolf was giving more on Sunday than most performers bother to. It’s just that in his case, he needs to push his meter into the red to really work properly. In his days with the Geils band, it was a wonder the way he’d overdrive his voice for hours a night, but it also, evidently, was a necessity: On the occasions Sunday when he didn’t abuse his larynx, his voice sounded thin and blanched.

He might not have been in peak condition, but he certainly went the distance, performing for more than 2 1/4 hours. He and his new band, the Houseparty 5, covered all the bases, including the Geils band’s hit and signature tunes, a respectable number of Wolf’s own songs, a few unreleased numbers and a John Lee Hooker blues.

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Even if he wasn’t quite able to keep up with it, Wolf set a killer pace, driving from one song right into the next. Among the highlights along the way was the 1973 Geils tune “Give It to Me” (written, like most of the band’s songs, by Wolf and keyboard player Seth Justman); it had much of the crowd up and dancing to its chunky, citified reggae pulse. The Geils arrangements of the Strangeloves’ classic stomper “Night Time” and the Valentinos’ “Looking for a Love” also caught Wolf at his howling finest.

Other old tunes included “Detroit Breakdown,” “Must of Got Lost,” “Love Stinks,” the breakthrough hits “Freeze-Frame” and “Centerfold,” and “Houseparty,” which closed out the second encore of generous 27-song set.

Songs from Wolf’s three post-Geils albums, spanning from 1984 to 1990, included “99 Worlds,” “Go Wild,” the ballad “Blue Avenue,” “When Women Are Lonely” and the fratricidal “Run Silent, Run Deep.” The only number that matched the spunk of his old outfit’s, though, was the as-yet-unreleased “Romeo Is Dead, and Miss Juliet, She’s Still Dyin’.”

Along with Wolf’s flagging stamina, the other eventually wearying element of the show was his quintet. All are fine, hard-rocking players, especially drum dynamo Dave Stefanelli, but they lacked the personality and depth to remain engaging over so long a show.

The Geils guys might have played arena rock, but like ZZ Top, they also were well versed in traditional blues and R&B; styles, and it colored their playing. Wolf’s new musicians lacked that depth, as was painfully evident when they attempted Hooker’s “Serve You Right to Suffer.” Wolf prefaced the song by recalling how much he worshiped the boogie progenitor, and he recommended that fans check out Hooker’s stark, powerful early solo work. And then the band flew entirely in the face of that, with an over-amped, overwrought parody of the blues, as if the audience deserved to suffer.

It seems to be a rare show these days in which the opening act isn’t something of an ordeal as well. Barrelhouse was a delightful exception. These guys from Seal Beach aim high--at the electrifying sound of Memphis’ Stax label artists--and they don’t fall embarrassingly short of their goal.

Unlike nearly every post-Commitments soul band, the musicians didn’t overplay or show off but, instead, laid down a solid backing for singer Steave Ascasio. Since its self-released cassette “Blues on 10th ‘n’ Central,” the group has added keyboards and horns, achieving the rich, warm sound of the Southern soul outfits. Such music either stands or falls with its singer, and Ascasio has a great set of pipes.

Barrelhouse’s seven songs all were solidly crafted originals, ranging from stage-burners of the Otis Redding “I Can’t Turn You Loose” school to such soul ballads as the recently penned “Misery.”

The dynamics and dramatics seemed a bit calculated in places, rather than emotionally necessary, but generally they held together, and Ascasio needs only a bit more abandon and experience in his singing to become headlining material.