Pop Music Review : Nowhere, Man : Rembrandts Fumble in Trying to Uphold Beatle-esque Tradition

In today’s pop marketplace, emulating the Beatles’ sound is no way to replicate the Beatles’ dominance.

It takes talent and skill to write, sing and play in a way that credibly pays homage to the Beatles, and given the prospect of no better than qualified success in return--better to hew slabs of Black Sabbath concrete or cultivate a Zep-like hormonal wail if big bucks are a band’s goal--it takes a genuine love of the music to be playing it at this late date.

Every so often, a Michael Penn, a Jellyfish, a Sam Phillips or a Matthew Sweet will manage, like Squeeze and Crowded House, to craft a batch of tunes strong enough to stick in the memory bank alongside all those Beatles songs that multitudes of Boomers and quite a few post-Boomers know by heart.

It helps immeasurably if the aspiring Beatles-inspired songwriter has a strong personal point of view. Fresh, distinctive insights can help lift the old sound out of a burnished yesterday and give it resonance and impact today.

By that measure, the Rembrandts rate no better than a “well, maybe” when it comes to inclusion in the ranks of worthwhile ‘90s bearers of the Fab torch. At their best, partners Danny Wilde and Phil Solem are able melodists and good singer-guitarists, but there is nothing that distinctive about their singing voices or their commonplace romantic-pop lyrics.

And Wilde and Solem were hardly at their best Tuesday night at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, where they were backed by a basic bass-and-drums rhythm section. Talented they may be, but the Rembrandts partners stumbled, then bumbled, and soon enough they lost the focus and aplomb it takes to make Beatle-esque pop fly.

Luckily for Solem and Wilde, they had drawn an audience of committed fans who were ready to cheer, regardless, for a band that has come into a good measure of success lately. “I’ll Be There for You,” the Rembrandts’ theme song for the popular NBC series “Friends,” is an MTV hit and has helped vault the duo’s third album, “LP,” into the Top 30 on the Billboard chart.

The Galaxy show was, as Wilde kept pointing out, the Rembrandts’ first concert in a year and a half. A few bum notes and missed cues would have been forgivable. Sometimes, a band returning after a layoff will play with extra brawn and boisterousness, making a comeback show memorable, even if a tad sloppy.

But so much of what the Rembrandts do is replication--primarily of the Beatles’ style, but sometimes of such Beatles-influenced acts as Squeeze and Tom Petty--that failing to produce exact stage reproductions of their recorded replications threw them into a funk.

It wasn’t all bad. The show started decently, with some darker, “Revolver”-style numbers. The chirpy “Friends” theme was briskly rendered, and a couple of ballads, “Drowning in Your Tears” and “Don’t Hide Your Love,” were pretty, if typically routine Rembrandts variations on the Beatle-esque.

Wilde and Solem, however, kept cracking self-conscious jokes about assorted imperfections that would have gone barely noticed had they simply soldiered on and maintained their enthusiasm. Instead, their witticisms grew sour and ever more self-conscious--a deathly attitude for pure-pop, a form of music that has to hold us in a spell of delight if it’s to succeed.

“We’re changing our name to the Coffins,” Solem quipped at one point. By the end, the Rembrandts had indeed managed to put the lively Beatle-esque form into a pine box.

The Rembrandts almost recovered near the end with their 1990 hit, “That’s Just the Way It Is, Baby,” which received a confident treatment until Wilde bogged it down with a poorly timed and overly long vamp about the vicissitudes of his adolescent sex life.

After that came two lethargic encores, one of them “Lovin’ Me Insane,” a poor excuse for a rockabilly rave-up. Before he finished, Wilde had insulted drummer Pat Mastelotto, calling him “that big, fat guy.” Whatever his shape, Mastelotto’s playing was crisp and energized all night. This debacle wasn’t his fault, nor that of the band’s capable bassist, Graham Edwards.

No band that’s selling Beatle-esque music should take the stage if it can’t play with freedom and confidence. The concert ended as a defeat for the Rembrandts, and an insult to a beloved tradition the band is presumably trying to uphold.

The opening band, Frosted, is a new venture for Jane Wiedlin, a member of the on-again, off-again Go-Go’s. In Frosted, which she said had been together just two weeks, Wiedlin cloaks her airy slip of a voice in raucous, garage-band attire.

A young-looking guitarist and bassist, plus New Wave veteran Clem Burke on drums, provided a raw but well-shaped backdrop for Wiedlin’s promising melodies.

There are interesting expressive possibilities if Wiedlin can make the contrast work between fragile and forceful elements, but this first live taste didn’t prove that she can operate effectively in such tough sonic surroundings.