Kiss Me You Fool

I headed to the Horseshoe on Saturday for some good-time oldies. Opening act U.S. Girls was an odd but good fit. This solo singer accompanied herself through samples and loops. The samples were certainly retro, Meghan Remy actually fed the sampler snippets from cassettes and even a reel-to-reel live on stage. Yet her songs had that girl-group feel, aided by Remy's voice which often oscillated between pouty and pleading very much in the vein of 60s Motown.

Marcellus Wallace looked to continue the throw-back vibe with suits and even blocky retro mics. Songs like Ain't No Thang and Brand New Day were upbeat and new soul. But I couldn't get into their set. It was good they tried to engage the crowd with exhortations and over-the-top staging, and some in the crowd were obviously fans. But this sort of excitement has to grow organically and not harangued into existence. And their music didn't have much depth beneath the shine. So it felt like being subjected to a 40-minute sales pitch for the next Bruno Mars.

 Everyone was excited to see headliner LaLa Brooks, one of the singers from 60s girl-group The Crystals. It was mostly a young crowd, but I saw quite a few white-haired attendees. Her back-up tonight was local Motown band The Big Sound. Amazingly, all 20 of them fitted on that bar stage including strings, horns, and percussions. Brooks came on and launched into one of The Crystals' biggest hit, Then He Kissed Me. There were other Crystals' songs too including the closer Da Doo Ron Ron and disquieting He Hit Me. But Brooks also mined other vintage tunes such as Beast Of Burden and Be My Baby. With the audience so into her set, 67-year-young Brooks not only shimmied on stage (including a precursor move to twerking), but also waded into the crowd several times. During the encore, she seemed quite touch by the reaction and sang You Show Me Love (a song she wrote "for her fans") with tears in her eyes. The night ended with the high-tempo Tina Turner version of Proud Mary.