So, Friday night I’m in my car headed towards the El Rey to see legendary punks The Slits. I’m excited. For my money, The Slits are one of the truly essential bands to emerge from the London “Class of ‘77”. I’m almost there, when my cell phone rings. “I have two free tickets – Row AA in the Orchestra Pit - for Rick Springfield at the Universal Amphitheatre.” (Actually, he said Gibson Amphitheatre, but in my mind, it will always be the Universal Amphitheatre.)

So, naturally, I turned around and headed towards Universal. In a crowd comprised mostly of MILFs and six year olds, me and my buddy felt slightly out of place. One lady even approached us and said, “You don’t look gay, why are you here?” The lady turned out to be the former president of a Rick Springfield fan club. She bragged that she knew Rick’s ankle size, and when I mentioned that his real name is Rick Springthorpe, she corrected me. “Actually, it’s Norman Richard Springthorpe.”

A mind-numbing forty-five minutes after John “Missing You” Waite’s opening set, Rick Springfield finally took the stage. Preceded by a shoddy five minute video of Rick’s career highlights, the band appeared to thunderous applause, and for nearly two hours, worked the crowd into a menopausal frenzy.

More review and more pictures after the jump.

photos by Heath Biter

Rick is a true showman. A Crowd-pleaser with a capital “C”. He looks and sings great, makes self-deprecating jokes, and spends almost half of the set in the audience. He played almost an entire song standing on my seat, grabbing my arm repeatedly for support. I swear, I’ve showered twice, but my arm still smells like Rick Springfield sweat. At one point, Rick grabbed a cell phone from a girl and had a conversation with whoever was on the other end. Later, he grabbed another cell phone and held it up to the microphone as the person on the other end sang along.

I was shocked by how many songs I recognized. “Don’t Talk To Strangers”, “Human Touch”, “I’ve Done Everything For You”, and, of course, “Jessie’s Girl”. There were a few clearly newer songs thrown in, and, inexplicably, covers of “Red House” and “My Generation”. The band, set up what seemed like twenty feet behind Rick, were perfectly adequate. The bass player – despite playing through a SVT cabinet – had a dull farty sound. The guitar player – despite playing through 4 Marshall stacks – had that thin flanged-out bad eighties soft metal sound. The keyboards were way too loud in the mix, and their greatest contribution was insuring that the songs sounded completely dated.

The truth is, a lot of the songs are pretty decent power pop. I can only imagine that with crunchier lead guitar, tasteful rhythm guitar and minus the keyboards, we might be talking about Rick with the same affection usually bestowed upon bands like The Plimsouls, 20/20, The Shoes, The Beat or The Knack. (Yes, I know Rick Springfield was way more successful than all of those bands combined.)

I never made it to see The Slits, and I sincerely hope they make it back to LA. If you want to hear a genuinely great record, do yourself a favor and pick up The Slits “Cut”. Their off-beat jagged idiosyncratic punk-dub-reggae funk sounds as fresh as ever. Their version of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” sounds like the B-52’s covering PiL. If you want to be thoroughly, thoroughly entertained, go see Rick Springthorpe the next time the county fair comes to town. Seriously.

For some reason, Rick was wearing an X T-shirt for the encores!