Creed, Opening Acts Performances Lacking Bands Showered Spokane Fans With Tired Tunes, Stage Antics; Just Plain Schlock

Creed, with Nickelback and Sevendust Tuesday, June 6, at the Spokane Arena

The marketing geniuses who put Creed, Sevendust and Nickelback on the same bill should add a few more names and turn it into a full-blown summer concert festival: Schlock apalooza.

For more than three hours Tuesday, the rockers treated a lackluster Spokane Arena crowd to some tired tunes and hackneyed stage antics.

Canadian band Nickelback started the show off with some innocuous hard rock that set the mosh pit moshing.

Then came Sevendust, a significantly heavier metal on the Periodic Table of Rock. The Atlanta-based band, with its drum-and-bass beats, committed ear assault for about 45 minutes with songs like “Denial” and “Head Trip Drama.” Singer Lajohn Witherspoon screamed like a deranged aerobics instructor on “Rumble Fish.”

“A lot of people didn’t understand what Sevendust was doing going out with Creed,” Witherspoon told the largely teen audience. Sure, they have different musical syles, but the bands are best buddies, he said. (Oh, well, that’s OK then. Look for Liz Taylor to be shaking it on the next big Michael Jackson tour.)

Creed, a Tallahassee, Fla., foursome with a bevy of hits off their first two albums, kicked off their set with “Ode.” But first came the flames and a booming explosion of fireworks, the first of many sparkler showers during Creed’s show. When all your songs sound the same, you’ve got to reclaim the audience’s attention somehow. (There will be lots and lots of fireworks at Schlockapalooza.)

Frontman Scott Stapp, with a voice so nasal it sounded as if he had his mouth surgically transplanted into his nose, strutted and flipped his long hair through radio hits like “Torn,” “With Arms Wide Open” and the band’s biggest tune, “Higher.”

Guitarist Mark Tremonti provided a few deft - and welcome - riffs on “Are You Ready,” “Say I” and “Faceless Man.” Besides being well-played, the guitar served to at least momentarily stop Stapp from singing.

“Faceless Man” was one of the better songs Creed played, a nice ballad that altered the show’s overwrought pace for a time. But then somebody had to flip on the ubiquitous rock-show fog machine, drowning the black-clad band in a San Francisco Bay pea soup. (Note to marketers: We’ll need plenty of fog to go with the fireworks at Schlockapalooza.)

“I think you know this next song by heart,” Stapp said before playing “My Own Prison.”

And we did. Such is the genius behind Greed, uh, Creed, in which a band this bad can sell millions of albums and rack up hit single on top of hit single.

With marketing like that, Schlockapalooza is sure to be a success.