To Jupiter and back with Train

Pat Monaghan is standing on his right leg, his left leg is extended taut behind him, arms flung outward and outstretched in some manic rock and roll asana as he serenades the crowd.

 

Fifteen years, five studio albums and three Grammy Award wins later, Train is back in Manila, through the efforts of Dayly Entertainment, Rockstar Touring and LAMC Productions. 

 

They played here back in June 2010 and Pat, the wiry singer with his signature bed head coif and strikingly wide vocal range, is effusive in his praise of local audiences. “We wanted to play here again because there’s just something about you [Filipinos] as a culture that’s so engaging,” he said at the press conference. “It keeps us coming back.” 

Folk and blues both have their roots around the campfire as music that drew communities together to articulate a collective condition and warm their bones. But while the latter was marinated in the agonies of slavery, the former occupied itself with confronting what was, back then for the American West, a frontier in both the spiritual and physical sense; its values and aesthetics begat modern country pop and all the Carrie Underwoods, Miley Cyruses and Taylor Swifts we are now heir to. 

 

I mention this because for every countrypolitan star on a crossover praxis attack taking their cue from Glenn Campbell and Shania Twain, is a Lucinda Williams, a The Dixie Chicks, an Over the Rhine and the late White Stripes. The true grit of frontier confrontationalism is alive and well and we can hear, in their songs, the ghosts of bluesmen who gave their souls at the crossroads for a gris-gris bag of vision and hooch. 

 

Train draws from this same deep well no matter how much they wrap it in pop rock and ribbon it with pretty boy appeal. It’s quickly apparent in Pat’s onstage merry-prankster-meets-psychiatric-patient-on-uppers moves. One minute he’s Mick Jagger, the next Elvis, and then Chuck Berry. 

 

You probably remember these guys for their massive and inevitably overplayed, chart-topping hit “Drops of Jupiter” in the late 1990s. That song was pure roots rock. With its romance and comforting emotiveness, it stood above the best work of then-contemporaries like Counting Crowes, Third Eye Blind and even Green Day at their snottiest. And though I think they lost the thread of their core sound with later LPs–-especially the appalling superficiality and inane catchiness of “Hey, Soul Sister” and “Marry Me” and “Shake Up Christmas”—there is welcome news that they are seeking a return to form with their forthcoming, sixth studio effort.           

 

Cross-generational

 

Train’s December 7 night, live in Manila, was a study in how these Bay Area rockers can still parlay popularity into a crossover and even cross-generational success. Earlier that afternoon, guitarist Jimmy Stafford was commenting on how they’re “very proud of our cross-generational fans. At concerts, parents are there, mothers are there with their daughters and they’re both singing.” 

 

It’s true. In the crowd with me were uniformed college students and hipster teens and parents who look like they’re young enough to have been with Train since their self-titled debut. Smart Araneta Center was almost packed. Certainly there were more people that night than when industrial band Nine Inch Nails was here in 2009. 

 

The new line-up of local band 6CycleMind warmed up the crowd as much as they could with a pretty decent set. An interlude of “Kaleidoscope World” during “Iiyak Mo Na” was notable in its delivery and superb timing. 

 

When the ambient whistle and growl of an old steam locomotive starting up announced the start of the main attraction, the nattily-dressed crowd rushed to the front and hollered when Stafford dove into the opening chords of “Parachute.” “If It's Love” and “Meet Virginia” followed and then Pat stooped to look at his rehearsed spiel, saying “Glad to see you again here in Manila!” in awkward and barely understandable Tagalog. The crowd ate that up. 

 

A great cover of “Don’t Stop Believing,” that Pat’s vocal prowess pulled off without flaw, slowly morphed into a variety show scene when Pat encouraged the audience to sing as he gave away guitar plectrums and then gestured like he was going to toss his acoustic guitar next. It got weird for me when he called up people (only girls acquiesced, though) to go up onstage and dance and don white Train T-shirts for competition over the guitar. 

 

Fifteen minutes later, the best dancer came away with Pat’s signed Takamine steel acoustic after singing “Hey Soul Sister.” Lucky girl! But how’s that for an obsession with audience participation? To recapture the momentum of the set, Pat walked into the crowd during “Marry Me” and grabbed digicams to take pictures of himself with the audience.