Kid Rock Rules

Kid Rock rules at raucous Rodeo concert with badass rock 'n' roll, turntable and flames

Kid Rock, you crazy rock 'n' roll animal. You won me over with a turntable and flames. I knew this was going to happen the second you blindfolded your lead guitar player while he was tearing into the solo of “All Summer Long,” and that was only a song and a half in. You were grinning in that fedora that you like to flip the brim up like you belonged in Run-D.M.C.

I was afraid that you were going to play a lot of those newer songs you’ve taken to writing lately. You know, the ones that sound a little too country for an American Badass like yourself? You opened up with “First Kiss,” and to be perfectly honest, the years of Jim Beam and cigars have not been kind to your vocal chords.

After that first song, I thought for sure the night was going in the wrong direction and that the closest we would get to seeing the Kid Rock of old would maybe be the obligatory run through “Cowboy” sprinkled in with a string of new songs that lacked the requisite bravado that we all came for.

Boy howdy was I wrong.

You and your crowded band full of backup singers, saxophonists, interpretive dancers, and other musicians took the audience — and by proxy America — to heights previously only navigated by bald eagles.

I wanted to leave my seat and grab a beer, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the stage for fear of missing some of the fun. I thought I saw an opening in the set list after you performed “Picture,” a riveting duet you recorded with Sheryl Crow and Allison Moorer. I could not have been more wrong. A song I didn’t recognize on the set list called “Three Sheets To The Wind” ended up being the high point of the entire night!

“Three Sheets” introduced his alter ego Bobby Shazam to the NRG stadium crowd of 66,540, a DJ who specializes in expertly chopping up what else but Kid Rock records on the turntable. I didn’t realize that Bobby Shazam was you until he took a giant slug from a glass of Jim Beam, but when that happened and the crowd lost it, I really wish I’d had a beer in my hand to toast your showmanship.

Of course, you had much more in store during that song. You play drums too? You own one of those talk boxes for your guitar? I hoped the song would go on for the rest of the night. Kid Rock, you really know how to own the moment.

I’m glad the show moved on, though. Less time showcasing your multi-instrumentalist chops means more time getting to the real meat of your career. “Cowboy,” “Only God Knows Why,” “Rock and Roll Jesus,” “Born Free.” These are the stuff fireworks are made of, and you brought plenty of that too.

The amped up way you tore into “Only God Knows Why” was much different than the steely ballad on 1998's Devil Without a Cause, but Tuesday night’s performance absolutely called for it.

Even after glittery bursts of pyrotechnics punctuated most of your set, I was still taken by absolute surprise when the perimeter of the stage went to full on flame throwing mode for your set list closer, “Bawitdaba.” Those fireballs were so big, so powerful, that I could feel the heat on my face from my seat in section 549. I couldn’t look away. As you brought the house down with that deliciously ridiculous blend of rap and metal that made you famous, it looked like a nuclear war zone on the field.

Why oh why did you get a Tuesday night billing at RodeoHouston this year? You sent too many rowdy fans out of the stadium and back into the middle of their work week instead of the great American wild of a Spring Break weekend. Was it because this was the second time you lit a cigar on stage? I promise I won’t tell anyone about that if it means you get to play on a Friday the next time you visit NRG Stadium.

Set List:

First Kiss

All Summer Long

Wasting Time

Johnny Cash

Cowboy

Picture

Three Sheets To The Wind

Rock and Roll Jesus

Only God Knows Why

Born Free

Bawitdaba

Kid Rock and his crowded band full of backup singers, saxophonists, interpretive dancers, and other musicians took the audience to heights previously only navigated by bald eagles.

Kid Rock and his crowded band full of backup singers, saxophonists, interpretive dancers, and other musicians took the audience to heights previously only navigated by bald eagles.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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