Concrete Blonde Solidifies Place in Commercial Market

Concrete Blonde’s Johnette Napolitano began her evening at the Wiltern Theatre on Saturday singing backup with the opening act, and she ended it a couple of hours later alone on the stage, moaning an unaccompanied blues.

In between, the fiery singer-bassist led Concrete Blonde through the obstacle course of humor and hurt that have been the band’s touchstones since it came crashing out of L.A.’s club scene a few years back.

If the concert didn’t strike a flash point of revelation until late in the game, it did showcase a maturing band that seems to have recognized the strength of its material and learned to deliver it with maximum effect.

You might miss some of the old impetuousness as the group goes mainstream (they’ve had a pop hit now with “Joey,” and will soon join the Sting tour as the opening act), but the reward is a clearer, stronger display of some of rock’s smartest songs and most impassioned singing.

Not that Concrete Blonde has become as mechanized as Madonna.

As the trio began a mid-set acoustic segment, Napolitano scampered across the stage and huddled with guitarist Jim Mankey, then consulted with drummer Paul Thompson and handed him a tambourine.

Returning to her mike, she explained to the crowd, “I’m arranging, I’m arranging!”

Napolitano, the temperamental queen of Hollywood’s rock ‘n’ roll streets, was in loose, amiable form, keeping the attention on what’s becoming a formidable songbook. Churning, choppy rockers alternated with the mid-tempo grooves that have proved Concrete Blonde’s commercial wedge--”Joey,” for example, a blend of Police-like surge and Spector scope.

Napolitano’s low-range croon tended to get lost in the mix, but when she cranked up into her passionate wail, the charge in the audience was palpable.

The acoustic songs provided further dimension, freeing Napolitano to follow her idiosyncratic tendencies into the intimacy of scratchy, whispery realms.

But it wasn’t until the encore that the show itself became as gripping as some of those elements. Joined by opening act Andy Prieboy, the band first dashed off a comic country version of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love,” then unfurled the stately “Caroline” before an emphatic closing statement of roots: their early, frantic anthem “Still in Hollywood.”

Called back a second time, Napolitano returned alone and sat like a folk singer on a stool, playing acoustic guitar on a love song by Nick Cave.

Then she stood at her mike and spun out an a cappella blues of desire, with every curl and filigree registering an emotional nuance.

It’s hard to imagine a performer seeming more genuine and vulnerable on stage.

If Napolitano established a range going from somewhere in the area of Edith Piaf to Tina Turner, she began things modestly enough before Concrete Blonde even appeared, stepping out to share vocals with her pal Prieboy on the final song of his opening set, the chilling “Tomorrow Wendy” (a Prieboy song that both acts have recorded).

Prieboy, probably best known for his stint as a singer with Wall of Voodoo, was assertively theatrical as he performed alone on electric piano, and he seemed to connect well with the audience with a short set of songs about art snobs, gay-bashing, sexual tension and madness.