NEW YORK — Sugar Ray ignored conventional concert structure Monday at the Hammerstein Ballroom and staged a performance that leaned more toward vaudeville than rock show. Four dates before the group's tour with labelmate Uncle Kracker wraps up in Pompano Beach, Florida, the band proved itself master of a syrupy ceremony in which actual music played only a small part.
The Los Angeles quintet made it through merely a dozen songs during its 90-minute set, never once playing any two tunes back to back. Singer Mark McGrath instead used the time to interact with adoring fans who swooned at his every gesture. Fleet-footed dance steps, combined with rock-star posturing that included flashes of midriff, worked the crowd into a frenzy.(Click for photos from the event.) The audience decibels peaked, though, whenever the hunky frontman whipped it out — his microphone, that is, which he kept secured in the waistband of his pants while sipping water or leading the crowd into a mass clap-along.
Onstage props gave Sugar Ray's predominantly teen and pre-teen fans an indication of what the band has been up to lately. A three-stool bar — with a sign reading "Ray's Bar" hanging above it — stood in one corner, while DJ Homicide's turntables were housed in a mock radio studio complete with an "On Air" sign. McGrath, on black-and-white checkerboard flooring that could have been plucked from a 1950s soda shop, was the lone outlaw among his bandmates, who sported police shirts.
Midway through their set, the group departed temporarily and conceded the spotlight fully to McGrath, who reappeared in disguise as the stereotypically cheesy host of the Sugar Ray-conjured game show "That's on You." Two preteen contestants spun the wheel and allowed fate to command half-hearted karaoke covers of Limp Bizkit's "Rollin'" and Crazy Town's "Butterfly."
The sing-alongs didn't stop there. A send-up of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" preceded an extended version of Sugar Ray's 1997 breakthrough single, "Fly." As an ode to opener Uncle Kracker, who McGrath characterized as one of the coolest guys he knows, Sugar Ray launched into Kracker's "Follow Me," which was received with even more appreciation than when Kracker himself performed it about an hour earlier. More cheap thrills were had when McGrath and Homicide took center stage for a mock bump 'n' grind to the Bloodhound Gang's "Bad Touch." But the true cover favorite was the Backstreet Boys' "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)," which McGrath sang in earnest after a speech about how A. J. McLean, currently battling alcoholism and depression, needs us now more than ever.
Although most of their songs — including "Answer the Phone" and "When It's Over" from the band's latest album, Sugar Ray — dwelled on puppy love, it wasn't all good-natured kid stuff. McGrath injected some mature themes into the show. Noting the smell of pot wafting through the air, he observed that if someone had indeed smuggled ganja into the gig, they should have brought enough for everyone — a modified classroom rule most in the young crowd cheered. And DJ Homicide pleaded with the audience to "make some muthaf---in' noise" and asked them where his dogz were at.
Sugar Ray drew the show to a close with a slam, performing the juvenile punk anthem "Mean Machine" from their heavy 1995 debut, Lemonade and Brownies. Even that song's edge, written when the band still had one, was tempered when McGrath interrupted it to scold a few unruly moshers.
The set ended with the mega-hit "Every Morning" from Sugar Ray's third album, 1999's 14:59. That LP's title referred to the group nearing the end of its 15 minutes of fame. As crowds continue to delight in whatever the group musters, Sugar Ray must have one hell of a snooze button.
Show opener Uncle Kracker obviously learned a thing or two while touring as the DJ in Kid Rock's backing band, Twisted Brown Trucker. Thematically similar to how Rock rolls live, the stocky Detroit MC and his band — two guitarists, drummer, keyboardist and bass player — wove cover versions into their original compositions, a stunt that unearthed their rock roots while drawing the crowd's attention to songs they might have otherwise ignored.
The opening riffs of Guns N' Roses' "Paradise City" excited the crowd before it melted into "Heaven," a song off Kracker's debut (Double Wide), whose chorus was geographically modified to, "If heaven ain't a lot like New York, I don't wanna go."
A dedication to fallen friend and fellow TBT member Joe C. was preceded fittingly by the first few bars of Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." And AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long," slowed down to a molasses pace, split Kracker's first single, "Follow Me," in half. His current radio hit, "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah," closed the set.
The abbreviated covers, combined with plenty of shout-outs to "New York Cit-tay" and an oral recitation of Kracker's résumé, which includes co-writing credits on Kid Rock's "Bawitdaba" and "Devil Without a Cause," won over the fickle crowd, which seemed unmindful of Kracker at the onset but were raptly enjoying his music by set's end.
For an interview with Sugar Ray check out ”Sugar Ray: It's Not Over...Yet.”
