Last night an old friend and I drove to Ann Arbor to see a double bill of Joe Jackson and Todd Rundgren perform at the Michigan Theater. It was pretty cool, and a fun time.

There was an opening act in addition to the two headliners, a quartet named Ethel. A string quartet: two violins, a viola, and a cello. But they rocked. Hard enough to burn through the hairs on their bows. And they fiddled as well, and they veered off into post-contemporary classical (or whatever it's called this week) compositions of their own.

Next up was Joe Jackson, the slightly younger of the two 50-something stars. He opened with a couple of his crooning tunes, and I was a bit worried, because it was clear he was having trouble with the upper range of his voice, and he was just getting started. He also fumbled a piano cascade, causing the audience to think he'd finished playing. But whether it was from warming up, or switching to his more shouty songs, his voice held out well enough for the rest of the show. He played a mixture of crowd-pleasing oldies ("Is She Really Goin' Out With Him?", "It's Different For Girls", "Steppin' Out", "Hometown") and some more recent songs from his reunion-with-the-band album Volume 4. He's had a fairly eclectic recording career, and he sampled it nicely. At one point he paused to decide which of several songs-he-didn't-write he was going to perform that night. I shouted a suggestion; he looked up from his notes and asked incredulously, "Did someone say 'Freebird'?" {wicked grin} Instead he played a couple verses from a bawdy ditty from the early 1900s.

After a brief intermission, Todd Rundgren took the stage. His recording career has been pretty diverse as well, including some pop-friendly ballads, loopy prog rock, and technological experimentation. He too indulged the audience with a few fan favorites, but couldn't bring himself to play them straight. He clearly gets tired of repetition and prefers to experiment, so he did "Can We Still Be Friends" with bossa nova syncopation (like on his fuck-with-the-listeners album With a Twist), performed "Bang on the Drum" on the ukelele, and a fairly straight rendition of "Hello, It's Me" went all jazzy toward the end. To be honest, some of his performances didn't quite work for me, such as when he used a hollow-body acoustic guitar with electric pick-ups on a rocker that really begged for a hard-edged metal sound. Still, a good show. (My friend also let me listen to Todd's latest album, which is quite good, and a return to straightforward songsmithing rather than another adventure in modern recording.)

Easily my favorite part of the show came during the encore set. First, Joe and Ethel returned to the stage to do one of his numbers. Then Todd joined them, for a cover of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (a song he'd recorded for a George Harrison tribute album): Todd on guitar, trading off lead vocals with Joe on piano, and Ethel covering Clapton's guitar solos... the two violinists taking turns with it, and ripping their bows to shreds in the process. The sextet closed with one of Todd's tunes, which... was unfortunately a bit of a let-down after "Weeps".

I haven't been to many concerts in recent years, just a couple that I got dragged to regardless of my wishes (e.g. Van Hagar). I've gotten way past the point in my life where I'd think nothing of driving across the state to see a band, but the combination of Joe and Todd was enough to entice me to take this trip. I've seen Todd a couple times before, once when he and Utopia opened for the Tubes (in connection with POV for the former band, and Love Bomb for the latter), and about ten years ago with the same friend and my since-lost boyfriend Andy in a small venue in Grand Rapids, in which Todd did a whole set playing the keyboard... of a Macintosh computer acting as sequencer. I think I enjoyed those performances of his more than this one. But Joe didn't disappoint, Ethel was a pleasant surprise, and Todd was some nice icing on the cake.