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EDMONTON - It was obvious, almost every aspect of last night’s INXS performance at Rexall Place had been carefully considered and planned.
Following the apparent suicide of INXS’s original singer Michael Hutchence in 1997, the band decided to carry on and, after failed attempts at finding a suitable singer, turned to the modern medium of television with their own rock-search reality show.
Canadian-born J.D. Fortune went swiftly from living in his car to a prime-time spotlight when he won the coveted gig with the world-renowned band. And there’s no doubt many handlers were on board to help with the transition.
In less than two months, INXS wrote and recorded its latest album, Switch – with Fortune taking credit on three tracks – and then hit the road to support it. It’s far from the most exciting record INXS has put out, so I made the natural assumption the live concert would be chock full of old hits.
The crowd watched a projected countdown to the curtain falling and when it did, INXS hit the stage with its 1991 hit Suicide Blonde. It was a warm welcome for fans. Fortune made all the cordial banter, telling the crowd how happy he was to be home and welcomed them to the party. He was wearing a dark jacket and shades that were gone by the time he launched into his second song, Devil’s Party, the first track off Switch that he co-wrote with Andrew Farriss.
Instead of INXS hits, the band played almost every track off the new album in the first hour with only a couple glances back to songs such as 1984’s Original Sin.
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But there appeared to be some method behind the madness, possibly giving the crowd a chance to accept this replacement in their nostalgic realms and warm up to the familiar instrumentation. If the band had run away with well-known material from their extensive catalogue, Fortune would have appeared much more as an impostor than a new individual with his own unique talents and stage presence.
One of the few unplanned additions to the show was the black leg brace and cane Fortune brought along with him. His comment to the crowd was, “There’ve been a few injuries on the road and two days ago a doctor said, ‘You’re not getting back on stage.’ And I said, ‘You’ve obviously never treated a Canadian.’ ”
Considering his handicap, he gave a fantastically energetic performance with incredible one-legged moves. Unfortunately, he relied a little too heavily on the sexy sways and self-touching. At one point he was actually sitting on the stage rubbing the mic stand, and was he kissing and licking it as well? It looked like it, and who knows if it was planned by the handlers, but the show rolled on.
Either way, even with just one good leg, Fortune blew the socks off Scott Stapp, who opened the show. The lead singer for Creed has been going it solo, but only injected a couple of songs from his new album, like Survive and Justify, with a lot of Creed hits.
Dressed in the official grunge rock uniform of layered shirts and greasy mid-length hair abandoned by most at the turn of the millennium, Stapp spent most of his time crouched down or literally sitting on the stage amps while belting out his moral optimism.
I’m not sure how many will follow him too much further down this road but he seems happy with himself, so we’ll just leave him to it.