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| 1997-04-14 | — | Hector Saldana - San Antonio Express |  | POE Sizzles as Garden Rocks
Saturday's chilly weather couldn't put a damper on the 5,000 plus fans who showed for the first of the season's "KlSS Rocks the Garden" concert series at the Sunken Garden Theatre, featuring the hot bill of POE, Better Than Ezra, Cowboy Mouth, Protein and Fluffy.
Headliner Poe opened her set with the teasing "Fingertips," trading the jazzy samples of her "Hello" album, for a stark staccato cello and drums accompaniment. So mesmerizing is this performance that young men and wome body surfed over the packed mosh pit to try to touch her.
"Choking the Cherry" rocked hard, building to a David Bowie style rave-up, similar to "Suffragette City." In fact Poe's excellent band, guitarist Daris Adkins, cellist Cameron Stone, drummer Jones and bassist Toby Skard plays with the virtuosity and inventiveness of Bowie's greatest sidemen.
There is joy in Poe's smilling, bouncy performance. She is as relaxed and unpretentious as her nearest pop rival, Alanis Morissette, is contrived and self-ablsorbed. As Poe sang the lovely, "Beautiful Girl," Stone's high harmony vocals and somber cello tones recalled Harry Chapman's "Taxi."
Poe introduced a new number, "I'm in control." The song's opening line, "Don't you mess with a little girl's dreams 'cause she's liable to grow up mean." Finds the singer as petulant as ever in a psychodrama reminiscent, musicalkly, of Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box."
"That Day" was a sheer triumph. One day, Saturday's concert goers will recount nostagically how Poe sang the quiet, heartfelt open letter wile doncers moshed and young girls mouthed along to the words. "That Day" is the unlikeliest of signature songs, but without a doubt, scored a direct hit with the audience.
Even as she was being pulled into the sea of fans, Poe managed to sing here hits "Angry Johnny" and "Trigger Happy Jack," coming across as an unusual combination of surfer chick and hip psychotherapist.
Opening act Fluffy, a British female quartet. played fast punk. And though no punches were thrown (singer Amanda Rootes had promised to smack rude boys in the kisser). Fluffy lived up to its image with "Nothing," "Crawl" and "Black Eye" -- slabs of barre chord-driven rock.
Protein ignited the mosh pit with its Southern-fried rock, a cross between Presidents of the United States of America, the Who and Pnmus. Cowboy Mouth blew away the crowd with a frenzied, high-energy show.
Cowboy Mouth have a bona fide hit on its hands with "Jenny Says."
Better Than Ezra suffered from a muddy mix and a set bogged-down with slow and mid-tempo filler. The tamest. if somewhat bland, power poppers, ran through a set which included their hits "Long Lost," "Good" and "The King of New Orleans"
by: Hector Saldana
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