Humble Mellencamp
Mark Lepage, Montreal Gazette
Published: Saturday, February 02
"You guys think it's gonna snow tonight?"
That was John "Meteorologist" Mellencamp, after delivering Check It Out four songs into last night's Bell Centre show. Now, the last time Mellencamp played Montreal, he would have been leaving the stage about 9 hours before the world wobbled on its axis. That was September 10, 2001. So, you know, a snowstorm...
Much has changed. Mellencamp, for one, is about 6 1/2 years older, and making zero attempt to hide it. "When I look in the mirror, I say: What the hell happened to me?" he sang, before asking "How many people here are under 30 years old?"
John Mellencamp performs at the Bell Centre Friday night.
Tim Snow / The Gazette
Indeed, Mellencamp was in a yapping mood in front of a crowd of 8,000. A born nostalgist, he is in a sense right where he should be: fiftysomething, looking back, with some road ahead.
And so the set pacing was years beyond the Top 40 gatling-gun of past gigs. After the Pink Houses opener and the four-song run, he was into an acoustic set including reflections on his generation's unfinished business, a challenge to whatever young'uns had been dragooned in by parents, and a version of Small Town including "My wife was 13 years old when I wrote this song." John Mellencamp, warts, wrinkles and all.
The theme here: humility. And in keeping with the age issue, he got ornerier as the night went on.
The stop-start pacing was a tip of the hat to the oomph in his catalogue - hey, the hits are coming, no worries - and afforded Mellencamp the space to lean in and spend his renewed political capital. After the hometown-bringdown songs Ghost Towns Along the Highway (new) and Scarecrow (older), he was into race and Jena.
For those who missed the news, Mellencamp made headlines when he mounted a song/video on his website addressing the nooses/bigotry ugliness in Jena, Louisiana last year. Here, there was fire: "Enough is enough is right now!" And he'd earned it, having made race a constant touchstone in his career, from songs to band membership.
The crowd roared. But he misfired with Our Country. If any song required some commentary to reclaim it... and yes, I'm sure he's sick to the uvula of explaining the car ad. However, absent the commentary, you could feel the Chevy fatigue in the audience. Smallest cheer of the night.
From there, Mellencamp announced that one issue remained to be dealt with: dancing. With deadline calling, it seemed a fitting moment to leave him to that vital bit of business, and call the evening a humble success. Not quite a Jubilee, but not lonesome either.
Tom Cochrane built an affectionate welcome into a genuine standing ovation with an hour-long opening set sharing the older-wiser humility theme.
He'd taken the stage to a crowd that was colder than a windscreen. Then Big League was dedicated as "Guy Lafleur's song. I love Guy." Honest banter, and a run of hits that time has shifted from the front page - Untouchable One, No Regrets, Life Is A Highway - and Cochrane had the crowd up and moving, offering the big O, and even demanding a surprise encore.
Humble Mellencamp
