Ask anybody who was at Pacific Amphitheatre Friday night, even the staunchest Jakob Dylan fan, and big money says they’d agree: The wrong band headlined.
Not that Train, the Northern Californian outfit that hasn’t released an album in two years, is necessarily better than the Wallflowers, the Southern Californian outfit that hasn’t released anything in three – although Dylan did just issue a well-received solo debut, “Seeing Things,” another austere Rick Rubin production akin to Neil Diamond’s “12 Songs,” only folksier.
This point is debatable, because both groups can be as meat-and-potatoes as Matchbox Twenty, both having excelled by not straying much from the straight-ahead formulas that put them on the map. But on record the Wallflowers have remained more consistently interesting, steadily expanding sonically while Train has mostly shuffled down the same track in service of singer Pat Monahan’s romantic choruses and rhyme-stuffed pitter-patter verses.
On stage, however, there’s no question: Train is an engaging crowd-pleaser, deliberately so, whereas Dylan and the Wallflowers continue to be as exciting as watching laundry dry.
Consequently, the former had much of the audience on its feet and singing along for the better part of its hit-driven 75-minute set. The downsized ‘Flowers, meanwhile, were a thudding comedown from the opening strains of “Three Marlenas.” They got a paltry Bonus Fara Depunere
