Terence Trent D'Arby
Funks Philly

November 5, 1995

 

ATN Philadelphia correspondent
"Funky" Chris Nelson reports:

Terence Trent D'Arby continues his rock and roll history revue in a host of small venues on the east coast. He brought the show to Philadelphia's Theatre of the Living Arts on Sun. (Nov. 5) night.

D'Arby's show often plays as a sometimes subtle, sometimes conspicuous rock and roll history lesson. More than a handful of songs bore traceable witness to music from the decade and a half between 1960 and 1975. When D'Arby jokingly referred to a piece from his first album by telling the audience to "Open your textbooks to page 223," he may as well have been actually talking about the giant pop songbook that serves as a metaphor for his varied influences.

The breadth of those influences--at various points D'Arby and his five piece band called to mind Sam Cooke, the Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Neil Young, Sly Stone, Prince, and others--helped D'Arby to create a show all his own, instead of a simple compendium of rock and roll's greatest inspirations. In addition, his natural talents lead me to believe that these nods to his forebears are meant as the sincerest form of flattery, rather than strip mining expeditions to compensate for a lack of original ideas.

That said, it should also be noted that some of D'Arby's references are more exciting and successful than others. Several of the '70's-styled songs from his latest album, Vibrator, veer off into the self-indulgent, wah-wah laced, three guitar attack of stadium rock.

In fact, it was actually D'Arby's older work, which looks more to '60's r&b than rock, that sounded freshest. In his set of two dozen songs, the pieces that came across as the most fluid and most durable (such as "I'll Never Turn My Back On You," "Sign Your Name," and "Billy Don't Fall") can all be found originally on D'Arby's first two albums.