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Nick Lowe's late set at the Bottom Line Monday night was one of the most energetically amusing, clever yet viscerally appealing 45 minutes of hard rock that this writer has heard in a long time. Mr. Lowe is more than just a hard-rocker. He's been around on the English pub-rock and new-wave scenes for more than a decade, has produced many of the finest names of the new British rock (Graham Parker, Elvis Costello, et al.) and has now released an LP of his own that is winning a lot of friendly attention.
Mr. Lowe is a bass player, and he had two guitarists and a drummer with him; together they formed about the tightest rock band around, One of the guitarists was Dave Edmunds, himself a fine rock and rockabilly singer, who did several solos; the other was Billy Bremner, a decent singer in his own right. And Terry Williams puts most rock drummers to shame.
Monday's set was nonstop uptempo energy. yet things never slipped into the monomaniacal onslaught favored by the more primitive punk bands. There was too much purposeful virtuosity and controlled variety for that.
In addition, Mr. Lowe is an enormously clever parodist who can evoke a wide variety of pop and rock styles yet never slip into faceless copying. He's witty without ever sounding slick, derivative or superficial, and the result was bracing.
The opening act was Willie (Loco) Alexander and his Boom Boom Band. Mr. Alexander is an eccentric hard-rocker from Boston who's been around for years and is finally getting some national exposure as a result of the new wave. He's an odd, not entirely satisfying but honorably bizarre figure in rock, and his set had its energetic virtues. But when Mr. Lowe, Mr. Edmunds and their fellows came on, one instantly realized the difference.
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