Page 10-Friday, July 11, 1980-The Michigan Daily
BERR YAND NARDELLA
Rocking orward into the past
By MICHAEL KREMEN
The Meadowbrook Festival on the
campus, of Oakland University in
Rochester, Michigan: It reeks of class.
Unlike that larger grassy knoll several
miles to the south, crass-trashy com-
mercialization has been kept at bay.
The excuse for this 125 mile (round-
trip) sojourn to this scenic venue is a
chance to see whether Ann Arbor's hot-
test traditional rock n' roll combo, The
Steve Nardella Band, can successfully
export their music to the wide world
beyond the safe confines of home sweet
womb, Ann Arbor. Not only will the
band by playing for strangers, on a
huge stage, but they're to open for a
legend, Chuck Berry, who helped to in-
vent the whole rock and roll shebang
twenty five years ago.
We arrive late and the Nardella
Band, in the midst of their set of basic
rock n' roll stylings, has, in fact, ex-
cited and ignited this audience of vir-
tual strangers into jumping around
with some strain of the rockin'
pneumonia or possibly its cousin the
boogie woogie flu.
Since the time guitarist ,extraor-
dinaire and ex-Silvertone, George
Bedard resumed performing with
Steve, the band's musical attack has
been set. During the past year, the
group has evolved substantially but the
changes have been mostly non-musical.
Where he used to be content to simply
sing and play in a relatively straight-
forward fashion, Nardella has loosened
up on stage and become a rivetting
front-person for the band, providing a
necessary visual focus. By the time we
got to our seats, Steve had already shed
his guitar (which he plays quite ad-
mirably) and was doing some sort of
neo-rockabilly gyration while the rest
of the band continued to rock out a solid
groove.
The crowd loved it. Up-tempo stom-
pers like "Summertime Blues," which
features George on the vocals, and
"Jailhouse Rock," the finale which is
one of .Steve's showpieces, were per-
formed with enthusiasm, integrity and
wit. However, it was a slow tune that
best demonstrated Steve's total control
of the situation. During the performan-
ce of "Fever," accompanied only by
Ted Harley's stand-up bass, Steve's
voice, virtually unadorned, reached
deeply into the lyric and made
emotional contact with the entire
crowd.
It sounds and looks like the Nardella
Band is ready to make the leap from
local raves to national attention. We
had better resign ourselves to sharing
this local treasure with rockers around
the country.
After a brief and decidedly non-
memorable metallic set (she says her
favorite bands are The Stones and Led
Zap) performed by Chuck's attractive
daughter, Ingrid, the elder Berry
finally arrived on stage. Using the
:U
Chuck Berry, perhaps the founding father of rock and roll, is still going
strong. Chuck is shown here in the middle of one of his patented leg splits
during a recent performance at Meadowbrook, where he was supported by
Ann Arbor favorites, the Steve Nardella Band.
same backing band that had played
behind Ingrid, Chuck launched into one
of his cosmic chord progressions. Im-
mediately the hired hands sounded 100
per cent better.
Reacting critically to Chuck's per-
formance at this point is somewhat dif-
ficult and possibly beside the point.
What was once an innovative, personal
guitar style has, by now, become part of
our collective (un)conscious(ness).
How does one evaluate a pop perfor-
mance that consisted almost ex-
clusively of material that was recorded
more than twenty years ago and, for the
most part, still sounds great?
With a huge repertoire of classics to
choose among, Chuck opted to play
mostly the super-hits: "Rock and Roll
SeeCHUCK, Page 11
0
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