Excellence Looks Easy for Isaak, An Angel Rocker

San Jose Mercury News
June 3, 1991
By David Plotnikoff, Mercury News Music Writer

Chris Isaak is not perfect. He's not some divine rock 'n' roll superhero cut from the pages of a dime-store comic book. He's a nice guy, but like the rest of us mortals, he has his limitations. For instance: He cannot do the funky mambo while balancing a chair on his head. Not at all.

This much we know because he attempted to do just such a funky mambo Saturday night in front of a sold-out crowd at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco. And he failed. With that said, it should also be noted that he sang like an angel, rocked like a runaway train, charmed the audience into a shrieking, swooning mass of jelly and was just about as close to dead-on perfect as one can get without a permanent gig in the Mount Olympus Lounge.

If the 34-year-old singer/songwriter/bandleader/matinee idol were capable of gloating (one suspects he's not), Saturday night's two-hour, 18-song powerhouse recital certainly would have been the time to do it. After nearly a decade of sweltering nights in virtually every rock club in the Bay Area, he's the hometown boy who made good. And after three critically acclaimed, commercially ignored albums on Warner Bros. Records, it's payoff time for San Francisco's perennial Next Big Thing.

It took an almost-2-year-old song and a little help from director David Lynch to put Isaak into the hearts of Middle America and onto the Billboard Top 10. Several months back, an Atlanta radio exec became enamored of the Isaak track "Wicked Game," which appears on the soundtrack to Lynch's film "Wild At Heart," and began playing it incessantly. The track was hastily reissued and picked up by stations across the country and finally -- after six long years as a commercial anomaly, a throwback to a bygone era of real rock 'n' roll idols -- Isaak had a hit. Rather than deviate an inch from his original plan, he'd waited for the world to come around to him.

Isaak, who was born into a blue-collar family in the tough valley city of Stockton before moving to San Francisco's Sunset District, didn't see any need to remind the adoring crowd at the Warfield about the years he honed his act on the local bar circuit.

Much of the material he used to such great effect Saturday night had originally been tested out years ago at Nightbreak, a tiny little biker joint just a mile up the hill on Haight Street. But Isaak didn't mention that. When you're in the company of family and friends, a lot can go unsaid.

Isaak and his three-piece band, Silvertone, wasted no time delivering the major songs. He strolled onto the stage wearing a baggy, square-cut suit made of a pomegranate brocade most often seen on living room furniture -- and immediately launched into "Dancin'," the languid lead track from his 1985 debut album.

He followed with the moody title cut off 1989's "Heart Shaped World" and "You Owe Me Some Kind Of Love," the lead- off single from his 1987 album. Strumming a vintage Gibson guitar that was almost baroque in its ornamentation, he kept the band on a tight leash as he rolled into The Big Hit, "Wicked Game."

The brooding, ethereal tune is the aural equivalent of a post-coital cigarette. When Isaak launched his achingly beautiful, larger-than-life Orbison-style tenor on the refrain, it was like having an ice cube run down your back on a hot day.

From there he let the band cut loose with a hurried, slam- dunk rendition of the rockabilly gem "Gone Ridin' " and a bellowing, resonant take on "Wild Love."

Isaak has perfected the sullen-angel-of-love persona on each of his albums, but anyone expecting to see that character in person was in for a surprise. In performance, Isaak is a font of droll stories and dry, deadpan wit. No other rocker could get away with an ad-libbed five-minute monologue about hanging out on Market Street. Clearly, this is the kind of guy you wish you'd get stuck sitting next to on a long Greyhound bus journey. A guy with a unique, somewhat off-kilter view of life. A guy who has spent a lot of time watching daytime television. A guy who understands the unspeakable coolness of Aldo Ray and "Hawaii Five-0" heavy Jack Lord. A guy who has tiki torches in his living room and opera records on his jukebox. And to think this guy sells in Peoria. Let the heavies at network programming try to figure out that one.

Undeniably, part of Isaak's appeal is skin-deep. The man is blessed with Adonis features and still has the body that once made him a Golden Gloves champion boxer. Compared to Isaak, Don Henley and Sting are just a couple of milquetoasts with funny haircuts.

Isaak used his longtime backing trio -- drummer Kenney Dale Johnson, bassist Rowland Salley and guitarist Jimmy Calvin Wilsey -- to great effect, trusting them several times to keep the musical home fires burning while he went off on some tangent. Wilsey did double duty, delivering some excellent, crystalline surf-guitar lines and serving as Isaak's comic foil. Texas sax player Johnny Reno arrived midset to round out the lineup.

Twelve songs into the set, after "Blue Hotel," Isaak veered away from his own songbook and worked through a mishmash of covers that ranged from the '40s jump-blues standard "Caldonia" to a Jerry Lee Lewis cover and a medley of '60s cheeseball hits such as Tom Jones' "Delilah." He closed with a de rigeur thrash-and-burn version of "Wild Thing."

Its a shame, given the more-than-ample two-hour show, that Isaak-penned gems such as "Western Stars" and "I'm Not Waiting" didn't make it into the set. But that's the only complaint that comes to mind, except for the fact he can't dance worth a lick with a chair on his head.

Isaak is an obsessive performer blessed with the ability to make excellence look easy. Saturday's show was just a routine night for him. Which is to say, it was damn-near perfect in every regard.

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