2 bands bland at Saratoga

by Matthew Maguire, The Knickerbocker News, August 26, 1981

Pablo Cruise and Little River Band, two pop bands whose tunes have gotten steady AM-radio airplay the last several years, delighted 5,000 fans at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center Tuesday with clean, tight sets of their clean, tight and bland tunes.

These two bands have virtually identical formulas for pop success. Their tunes generally feature simple and pleasant melodies with simple lyrics on less-than-earthshaking topics, supported by tight, multipart background singing, thumpingly heavy rhythm section accompaniment, and lyrical guitar leads, often by two guitars in harmony.

For better or for worse, this type of pop is not the deepest commercial music available today. The lyrics rarely provoke any thought, the music seldom involves more than a handful of chords in a routine progression, and the instrumental solos and underlying rhythm figures inevitably comprise a mosaic of clichés.

So what makes this music interesting? Execution. In the musicians’ parlance, it must be tight. The guitar leads and background vocal harmonies must be crisp and clear. The rhythm figures must be loud and precise. And the tunes must follow each other smoothly to form a musical package which is, like its components, tight.

Both Pablo Cruise and Little River Band executed well Tuesday night. The former band skillfully mingled material from a coming album entitled “Reflector” with old hits such as “Love Will Find a Way,” “Cool Love,” “Find Your Place in the Sun” and “Don’t Want To Live Without It.” The latter band blended material from its upcoming release, “Time Exposure,” with familiar hits such as “Happy Anniversary,” “Reminiscing,” ‘Time For a Cool Change,” and “Lonesome Loser.”

Alas, this music is generally as bland as it is tight. Only Pablo Cruise, with a bright samba entitled “I Go to Rio” and a long instrumental piece left unidentified, was able to transcend car radio music Tuesday night.

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