Intimacy issues? Not for Maroon 5
Last week Maroon 5, the L.A.-based funk-rock quintet that rode a slow rocket to fame with 2002's "Songs About Jane," sold nearly half a million copies of its brand-new sophomore CD, "It Won't Be Soon Before Long." Yet Saturday night the band played a sold-out show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, where a capacity crowd tops out at around 450.
Do the math: Even if everyone who bought a first-week copy of "It Won't Be Soon" lived in L.A. -- not a completely unreasonable idea, given the number of young Hollywood hotties frontman Adam Levine has romanced -- only one out of every thousand of them could've fit inside at the Troubadour. In this moment of record-industry crisis, why would the No. 1 band in America willfully choose to downsize rather than pack 'em in at a bigger room? Let me count the ways:
1. You can stack the deck. Maroon 5's official fan club, Strength in Numbers (cute acronym alert!), had first dibs on tickets for Saturday's show, which filled the Troubadour with devoted band loyalists (and their boyfriends).
Though the new album contains more than its fair share of toxic-bachelor kiss-offs -- "If I never see your face again," Levine sings in the opening track, "I don't mind, 'cause we got much further than I thought we'd get tonight" -- Maroon 5 is best known for "She Will Be Loved," a syrupy ballad that made the group a favorite among the sort of halter-topped young women who transmit enthusiasm via whoop. On Saturday, these ladies -- including Jessica Simpson, singing along in the VIP section -- rewarded each of Levine's lover-man moves with enough excitement to bolster the singer's sex-god confidence for at least another week or so.
2. You can accentuate your assets. Maroon 5 knew what it was doing on "Songs About Jane," but its craft reaches new heights on the harder-hitting new album, where the band layers brittle funk guitars over throbbing R&B beats. At the Troubadour, the band used the intimate environment to its advantage, filling the small room with dense, polished sound in a way that physicalized the sexual paranoia in Levine's songs. Larger venues afford a broader attack but a much less detailed one, and Maroon 5's music is all about detail.
3. You can tell stories about your childhood. After a typically taut rendition of "If I Never See Your Face Again," Levine called Saturday's show a "wonderful homecoming": At the age of 12, the singer played his first rock concert (with a band called Blurred Vision) at the Troubadour; he sang "Rockin' Robin," he explained, with his back to the audience for the entire song.
