With Bad Company, It’s Hits and Misses

Why do reunion acts insist on performing new songs in concert? In Bad Company’s case, it may be an attempt to flash its artistic virility, to seem like something other than a band cravenly performing oldies for baby boomers on the summer circuit. But with Spinal Tap-esque song titles such as “Hammer of Love,” the British quartet was better off sticking to its back catalog at the Greek Theatre on Sunday.

Bad Company emerged in the mid-’70s as the foremost practitioners of hairy-chested hard rock, with music built on a foundation of guitarist Mick Ralphs’ appealingly plodding riffs, Paul Rodgers’ gruff yet supple vocals and a lot of songs that celebrated male libido and female pulchritude. At the Greek, the band’s most popular songs--”Can’t Get Enough,” “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” “Bad Company”--got the requisite audience-participation treatment, with Rodgers ceding the choruses of each song to the sold-out crowd.

There were far too many moments that felt like ego-massage. Ralphs stumbled through a sluggish take on Freddie King’s “Hideaway,” and bassist Boz Burrell insisted on playing irritatingly busy lines. Only Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke performed as if they didn’t have a plane to catch. With his manhood-hugging jeans and skin-tight tank top, the band’s fit singer Rodgers, 49, was like an old ballplayer eager to prove he can still cut it with the young bucks.