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POWER STATION NO LIGHTWEIGHT IN ROCK
Published: Sunday, August 18, 1985
By Mark Faris, Beacon Journal staff writer
There are three reasons Andy and John Taylor would use vacation time from Duran Duran to
form Power Station:
1. They needed still more money. (John loves clothes.)
2. They needed to make still more music.
3. They needed an excuse to stay off Duran Duran lead singer Simon LeBon's million-dollar yacht
(which capsized off the coast of Spain last week).
Although strong cases probably could be made for all three, Power Station's performance
SaturDAY, at the Coliseum would indicate the latter -- the Taylor boys wanted to make still more
music.
And for the most part, it was good music.
With drummer Tony Thompson, singer Michael DesBarres and a red-hot back-up -- keyboardist
Chuck Kendis, saxophonist Frank Elmo and singers Curtis King Jr. and Philip Ballou -- they
raced through a throbbing 90-minute set that more than lived up to the 6-month-old band's name.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the show was that a band that attracts such a young
following (most of the 8,000 who showed up Saturday, appeared to be well under voting age) can
do it with such hard-hitting music.
Although the four members -- particularly John Taylor and DesBarres -- obviously spend a lot of
time in front of the mirror (Cal Klein would love ' em), they crank out a rowdy, rough-and- ready
funk that would do justice to such classic outfits as War or, in some instances, even Bowie or the
Stones.
Despite the Coliseum's Grand Canyon-like acoustics, Power Station was able to bring across
such head-knocking standards as Martha and the Vandellas' Dancing in the Streets, and T Rex's
Bang a Gong, as well as their own Go to Zero and Some Like It Hot with enough precision and
thunder to just aout blow the roof off the big arena.
Although there was plenty of posing for the young ladies -- especially by John Taylor and
DesBarres, who took about five minutes to put on a tank-top and slowly tuck it into his trousers
-- it was all put aside (at least most of it) when the music started and the boys went to work.
Like the music, the lighting was also surprisingly effective with vivid colors illuminating from a pair
of large cubes on either side of Thompson and brilliant overhead beams forming three dimensional
cocoon-like orbs around the band.
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