Reviewer L.A. Armstrong heads down to Jacksonville to check in with Flint, the headliners of this summer's version of the Hits Until Morning Party.
Reviewer: l.a. armstrong
Cascading Noyze Magazine
August 1999 Issue
Neptune Beach, FL-- I remember my first impressions of seeing the headliners of this summer’s Hits Until Morning Party and thinking when did the Stone Temple Pilots get back together and call themselves Flint. It wasn’t that Flint were bad but let’s just say, I had seen some form of ‘Flint’ too many times before. However, that was over a year ago in a club. With some apprehension, I took the assignment of reviewing Flint’s headlining act. If Flint couldn’t impress me in a band-friendly setting like a local club, what hope would their performance at an outdoor festival have?
It was opening night of the well-documented H.U.M.P. tour and Neptune Beach, just outside Jacksonville, had not been kind. A consistent downpour and a few technological mishaps had shaken some of the less seasoned performers on the bill. Would Flint, who are touring veterans from the early 90s, succumb to the huge pressure of their surroundings? The answer was an emphatic no.
The stage went dark and the hum of the crowd was like a train coming. The noise just kept building and building. Samples of urban chaos densely trickled out of the speakers as the momentum crept towards the moment that the band most of this crowd had come to see would magically appear. Stage games, which Flint seemed to borrow from Guns ‘N Roses, are part and parcel of this band but so is hyping up an audience. When a harnessed blue Power Ranger descended from the scaffolding high over head amidst a pyrotechnic display similar to a comet striking a giardia-infested lake, the packed fairgrounds erupted in unison. Although no one knows what instrument he plays in Flint, Pierre Young, took off the mask and stepped up to the mike: “Is everyone ready to hump?”. The baited question was answered in an orgy of the affirmative, likely aided by Pierre’s three-sizes-too-small blue unitard that revealed his well-proportioned package to the delight of the ladies and the jealous chagrin of their dates.
Opening with a stellar cover of Bobby Brown’s “Humpin’ Around”, Flint’s singer Cody Jackson ripped into the crowd with his whisky-soaked Joe-Cocker-meets-Corey-Hart vocals. Flint went to the band’s MTV-friendly sulking-rock staples “Apocalypse 2000” and “I’m Not Chinese” early in the show to get the audience involved but Cody perhaps got the biggest crowd approval during a momentary pause between songs when he playfully mumbled into his mike, “Sometimes I run, sometimes I hide...” in deference to the young-singer-with-new-breast-implants gossip that has dogged the twenty-four year old Jackson in recent months.
Juwan Pilgrim’s guitar put punctuation into a full catalogue of Flint songs as well as a couple of glorious covers from 80s favorites. Juwan is quietly proving once again that he must be considered one of the most talented and underrated musicians in the current generation of popsters. His guitar work meshes so well with Lance Overmars on bass and together they create the tempo for Cody to unleash Flint’s madness, which I must say is their genius. This band’s live performances has improved so much that if a similar ascension in athletics occurred, steroid use would be suspected.
Despite the rain and a roster half-full of unknowns, most of H.U.M.P.’s paying customers went home happy. Flint has acquired a solid, neurotically obsessed Southern fan base and subsequent shows on H.U.M.P. ’99 may not have the opening night enthusiasm of the Neptune Beach performance but will provide music fans with one of this summer’s unique highlights.