May 2002, Sunfest West Palm Beach waterfront, West Palm Beach, Fla.
Normally I wouldn’t go see No Doubt, not because I think it’s a bad band, but because I’m indifferent about it. No Doubt is one of those bands that finds a modicum of popular following, with songs good enough to be catchy, and rides it for all it’s worth. It’s not a bad way to go if you can pull it off.
The occasion was Sunfest, an annual music festival in West Palm Beach along the Intracoastal waterway which merges bands of all kinds, artwork, and weather denoting the full brunt of summer. You buy a ticket for the festival and catch the various shows as they come, and in 2002 No Doubt was the headliner.
Festivals can be odd places to see shows, especially if you love the band in question. Many of the people there aren’t rabid fans but there by happenstance — there’s a show, they have a ticket, why not go see. Invariably you’re around people who don’t share your feeling about the music coming off the stage. For this reason, if I really love a band, I go to a show of theirs alone so I can see it surrounded by people of like mind.
But I was one of those others at the No Doubt show, there because I had a ticket and not because I had a passion for the band. But I have to hand it to Gwen Stefani and her bandmates (which I know they hate) — she did well to bring the fractured crowd into one.
This was the Rock Steady tour, the last album the band would do for 11 years, and the band was tight and organized. Rock Steady had the band in a different place than previous albums, with it geared more toward dub, reggae and synths. The result pushed out a couple of hits, including “Hella Good” (which the band opened with) and “Underneath it All”. But for this show the band was smart to take songs liberally from its 1995 hit album Tragic Kingdom, including “Sunday Morning,” “Happy Now?,” “Different People” and the ubiquitous “Don’t Speak” and “Just a Girl”. With “Don’t Speak,” much like the video, she sang it toward bassist and former boyfriend Tony Kanal, which made me wonder if he ever got sick of that.
Drummer Adrian Young stood out most, partly because he wasn’t really wearing any clothes (which I understand was a norm), but mostly because of his frantic and impressive drumming. His set, which lit up at intervals, wasn’t elaborate but he got everything out of it.
All in all, a good show, enough to leave an impression.
