Lenny Kravitz, Pink, Abandoned Pools

If this isn't the summer concert season's most cynically assembled package tour, I obviously missed the R. Kelly/Gary Glitter double bill. Lenny Kravitz gets to play to a younger audience than the graying Guess Who devotees he's getting used to; Pink takes another step in the acid-washed, pre-alternative rock direction...

By Mikael Wood

August 15, 2002

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If this isn't the summer concert season's most cynically assembled package tour, I obviously missed the R. Kelly/Gary Glitter double bill. Lenny Kravitz gets to play to a younger audience than the graying Guess Who devotees he's getting used to; Pink takes another step in the acid-washed, pre-alternative rock direction she's trying so hard to make look natural; Abandoned Pools enjoy the novelty of playing to more than two dozen people every night. Not that the evening will be without its pleasures, of course: Pink's becoming a more interesting (and more entertaining) performer with every dubious rebel yell, and Abandoned Pools' hit "Mercy Kiss" is a really fruity hunk of MTV2 Bubble Yum. (Imagine Filter if it skipped the crappy aggro-industrial schlock and stuck to tunes like "Take a Picture." And imagine they weren't dickheads.) But these ephemeral thrills are hardly enough to merit forking over $35.50 to get in the gates, and they definitely won't make the burden of Kravitz's limply retrofitted cock-rock--which leaves an especially bad taste if you found much to like in the singer's first two albums of delicately imagined nouveau-soul--any easier to bear. Better bet: Go sell your BTO and Madonna CDs to a used store and buy them back at twice the price.

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