Promoted by Goldenvoice/Avalon. Band: Ed Roland, Ross Childress, Dean Rolland, Will Turpin, Shane Evans. Reviewed Aug. 17, 1995. Georgia’s Collective Soul sell bucket loads of albums (both of its Atlantic titles has sold a million copies) and have toured with some of rock’s biggest attractions (Van Halen, Aerosmith) but the band hasn’t yet been able to find a formula for concert success. At the sold-out Palace, Collective Soul’s 75-minute set was rife with slick guitar hooks, arena-ready choruses, formulaic posturing and frat-boy banter, proof that the band learned a lot about smoke and mirrors from Aerosmith and Van Halen, but have yet to expand on those riffs.
The few occasional bursts of inspiration here — the hard-hitting opener “Simple,” the danceable “When the River Flows”– were counterbalanced by the band’s terribly unfortunate cover of the Gap Band’s “You Dropped the Bomb on Me, ” a development best forgotten.
