When conjuring up images of the small, economic and reliable Honda Civic, one can't help but think of a car mostly driven by teenagers, college students or young adults entering the real world. So it only seems fitting that Honda would want to sponsor a tour featuring the popular rock band Maroon5 as its headlining act since its music and the Civic appeal to the same demographic.
The Los Angeles-based quintet this past Sunday performed at the Anaheim Pond as part of the Honda Civic Tour with supporting acts Simon Dawes and The Thrills. The tour ends this Friday in Santa Barbara before starting up again when the group heads off to Europe at the end of the month.
Although the band - frontman Adam Levine, guitarist James Valentine, keyboardist Jesse Carmichael, bassist Mickey Madden and drummer Ryan Dusick (substituted for by Matt Flynn as he's still recovering from a shoulder injury) - played its hit tunes like "This Love," "Harder to Breathe" and "Sunday Morning," it did incorporate choral bits of the Police's "Roxanne" and Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" in what appeared to be an improvisation interlude on one of my favorites, the sultry and mischievous "Secret." They also played another favorite "Sweetest Goodbye" that Levine said was a song that almost didn't make it onto the album and has since grown on him.
Levine, who's also rather accomplished on the guitar, ran and danced from one end of the stage to the other. He would oftentimes drag the tips of his shoes along the way and stop to bounce up and down while holding the mic in his right hand while retracting his left into the sleeve of his sweater and clutching it from the inside. One can't help but wonder if Levine is heavily influenced by Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson based on his unique syncopation and vocal phrasing.
Just in the same way Max Weinberg of the E Street Band can somehow evoke robust and heavy rock beats out of a jazz kit, so can Flynn who played with the same amount of toms - one floor and one rack.
Even though its fans go crazy when they play the hits, Maroon5 is probably sick and tired of playing them, so it was refreshing to hear a couple of new songs - "Wasted Years" and "I Can't Stop Thinking About You." The latter is a dynamic change in terms of lyrics since much of the content from the debut album "Songs About Jane" address the emotional upheaval one girl - presumably Jane - can cause for one boy - presumably Levine. "Wasted Years" once again exemplifies the band's knack for writing into the songs a series of infectious breaks and further exhibits its forte as being a tight band when everyone drops out of the song except Madden working the bass, a few notes strewn across the quietness by Carmichael and Levine's ethereal vocals. Each member eventually comes back into the song like a sonic tsunami. Maroon5 has shown that it can juxtapose textures and phrases of polar moods and sounds - the streaming of the delicate with the heavy, the dainty with the raw. "I Can't Stop Thinking About You" exhibits the punk/ indie rock side of a band, but still maintains great melody, which is the formula that has reaped the band so much success in the context of their musically mainstream pop tunes.
For the encore, the boys returned to the stage with Flynn laying down the opening drum lines of U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" for a few moments, but opened with "She Will Be Loved." They ended the set with the next song, ACDC's "Highway To Hell" sung by Dusick. Levine got behind the drums hammering out eighth notes on the high hat, quarter notes on the snare and a thrashing, unpolished drum ending battering it against the distortion of three guitars - Dusick, Carmichael and Valentine.
All in all, the concert was lively, especially when checking out a band that actually sounds better live than it does on its album and did so among many young fans, mostly girls, all of whom could have been extras for the "O.C."
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