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First came the novel.
Then the movie. Then the album. Then the other album.
Now, with a new copyright-friendly title, comes the tour: The Committed World Tour Featuring Stars From The Commitments.
With a line-up, as guitarist/emcee Ken McCluskey put it, consisting of "a few people from the movie, a few from the albums, and a couple of gorgeous girls," The Committed band affected a nifty intertextual trick two nights running at The Warehouse.
The trick was: real band imitating actors, imitating real band, imitating old records.
Both nights were sold out, so life continues to imitate the movie, in which a group of Irish bar musicians hit it big with a spirited (if literal) re-reading of '60s soul. The Committed also play The Warehouse July 28.
Being in the audience Thursday night was like a consolation prize for not having been an extra in The Commitments movie.
The band bathed in the distant candy pink and peppermint green of the gaping Warehouse stage, looked vaguely like that in the movie - with the notable exception of the the movie's bombastic lead vocalist. But their sound remained true to the movie soundtrack, true to the old records they emulated.
Mustang Sally, Rescue Me, Mr. Pitiful and the like, were delivered in true Wilson Pickett, Fontella Bass, Otis Redding form, horn and vocal licks intact, pace slightly quickened.
Lead vocals were supplied alternately by guitarist McCluskey (meat-locker axe man Derek Scully in the movie), Dick Massey (psychotic Billy (The Animal) Mooney in the movie) and two female vocalists, who, unlike their movie counterparts, can really sing.
Beyond deft delivery of the material, the group's creative contributions were limited to the back-up vocalists arm and hip choreography and Massey leading the crowd in chants of "Bollix! Bollix! Bollix!" in mid-Mustang Sally.
Originality, of course, was never the point of the band in The Commitments.
But after book, movie, albums, does the world really need The Commitments story re-told in World Tour format?
Someone please keep Andrew Lloyd Webber away from this material.
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