Black Rebel Motorcycle Club performs rock 'n' roll tour

By Kelsey Whipple

Published Oct. 19, 2007

It's not until after they set their instruments down and after listeners can hear again that they realize how hard the guys in Black Rebel Motorcycle Club work to earn their strut. Since their San Francisco inception in the late '90s, Peter Hayes, Rob Levon Been and Nick Jago have championed leather jacket swagger and a gutsy fusion of distorted shoegaze and down-home rockabilly, all of which is loud. The band's brew of delay pedals and harmonica solos is not an easy one to pull off, but with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the songs, like the jackets, are always sexy.

When crowd members started shoving their empty beer bottles toward The Blue Note stage, bets were on Monday's show following true Black Rebel Motorcycle Club form — loud and rowdy, if small. And when the three disheveled garage-rockers launched into "Took Out a Loan" from their latest album Baby 81, the move proved almost psychic. It seems bottles interfere with a good freak-out. An aggressive run-through of the song's album successor, "Berlin," followed as seizure-friendly strobe lights pulsed at fans across from the band's giant black, of course, backdrop.

The typical Black Rebel Motorcycle Club concert mix is heavy on guitar solos and light on small talk, but this time fans got both. Vocalists Hayes and Been, decked out like T-Birds, made up for drummer Jago's stationary status by spending a good portion of the performance hunched over amps and laboring over lofty solos. By song five, rowdier fans were shouting for rock 'n' roll, and they were already getting it, although the song was saved for later.

During "Howl," Hayes and Been switched their positions at the poles of the stage as techs ran to keep up with their chords. The song, all bottom-heavy bass, crooning vocals and world-weary lyrics, went over well enough to merit a word from a now-hoodied Been.

"You guys are really fucking cool," he said. "You want to hear some down-home acoustic shit?"

Without waiting, the rest of the band left Been alone onstage for a rousing cover of Dylan's "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." Near the lengthy song's end, Been surprised the audience when he stopped strumming and let the show rest on his vocals, somewhere below a whisper.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club takes its goal of sonic overload seriously, and if listeners are not prepared for the band's 2 1/2 hour set, visceral 10-minute solos and general rock-star moodiness, they should not come. But if they can handle it, it is worth it.

After a fan's request for a Jonestown song was denied, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club thundered through "Whatever Happened to My Rock 'n Roll" to return after a pleasantly short wait for an encore of epic proportions. At Black Rebel Motorcycle Club shows, there's always a feeling that the guys are trying to prove something to the crowd, even if it's only that they are long winded. The band's dragged-out rebound ended in a colossal whether-they-want-it-or-not solo, as a cigarette-smoking Hayes fell to his knees, weakened by an onslaught of sweat and distortion.

The same uncurbed cockiness found its way into Been's post-show boast.

"It's a real rock 'n' roll tour, and you don't get much of those these days," he said.