Chemical Brothers Make Wrong Mix

Let this be an argument against the techno concert and not against any particular dance music act, which in this case happened to be the Chemical Brothers at the Hollywood American Legion Hall on Thursday night.

With few exceptions--Orbital’s fascinating nob-tweaking, 808 State’s integration of traditional instruments, Moby’s animated punk programming--dance music does not lend itself to traditional, rock-style performance and does just fine under the auspices of the deejay.

And so it was that the British duo who are the Chemical Brothers--riding high on last year’s “Exit Planet Dust” album and the recent ode-to-Beatles single “Setting Sun”--found themselves on a stage, in front of a packed house, programming a cadre of synthesizers, sequencers and drum machines to create a medley of hits Casey Kasem would be proud of. (“Play some Skynard, man,” yelled one cynical fan.) Their desperate attempts to make a show of it--adding precious white strobes, strange projection graphics, jumping up and down, adding an unexpected interlude of loops--only recalled the mediocre on-stage techno of groups past (such as Altern-8, which let its sequencers do the talking as the group members aped around the stage in enviro-alarmist clown suits).

Clearly, the Brothers changed the dance music landscape when their song “Chemical Beats” moved the underground with a new breed of guitar-infected rhythm in 1994. And their open-minded deejay performances are legendary mixes of dance history--from Eric B. & Rakim to the Charlatans. But they say they will not deejay outside of the U.K. It’s our loss.