Energetic Concrete Blonde Reunites for Benefit Gig

Mixing nostalgia with immediacy, the original members of L.A. favorite Concrete Blonde reunited Sunday at Spaceland during a benefit concert for the New York Firefighters 9-11 Disaster Relief Fund.

“It could have been us,” said singer-bassist Johnette Napolitano, expressing solidarity with the victims of last month’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The 45-minute set was the main attraction of a daylong event that featured more than a dozen groups, including the Bicycle Thief, Wiskey Biscuit and the BellRays (playing an acoustic set).

Concrete Blonde gained a devoted following in the mid-1980s, scored a Top 20 hit with 1990’s “Joey” and broke up in 1994. The band’s songs often revealed the seedier side of Hollywood’s glitter dreams, underscored by Napolitano’s husky, hard-luck-ravaged voice and Jim Mankey’s noir, blues-edged guitar work.

On Sunday, circumstances put fresh urgency into “God Is a Bullet,” a churning lamentation of innocents harmed in gang warfare that gained global resonance with its frustrated refrain, “If God is a bullet/have mercy on us, every one.”

Though serious about doing their part, Napolitano, Mankey and drummer Harry Rushakoff didn’t completely shy away from humor, wittily fusing a snippet of the traditional Irish folk song “Whiskey in the Jar” with “Joey,” a tale of a relationship ruined by alcoholism.

Energized by the enthusiastic response of a crowd that swelled appreciably just before the band went on, Napolitano frequently thanked the audience and expressed hope for peace.

These comments and her forcefully emotive performance kept things in the moment, even when the players evoked their glory days with the wry anthem “Still in Hollywood.”