G. Love and Special Sauce

With a statue of Buddha on top of an amp and the stage washed in a snowy purple glow, G. Love and Special Sauce brought the sold-out Commodore crowd to life. Now a decade in and with several albums behind him, he was able to tap into a range of Philly blues-infused hip-hop, from the sly "Garbage Man” and the obscure nursery rhyme style of "Milk and Cereal” to material from his latest yet-to-be-titled work due out later in the year. Also snuck into the mix was a playful rendition of "Walk On The Wild Side.” G. Love is a born performer, a trait that separates the few front-men who can steal a show with multi-talented professionalism from the ones that try too hard. His ability to single-handedly capture an audience says much about his long-term success and staying power in what has become an often copied and watered-down music scene. He interchanged guitar with harmonica in a stream of conscience old-school blues sort of way, backed by a stand-up bass and two drummers. While fans of G. Love couldn’t get enough of the jam session digressions between songs, for those not in comfortable shoes it may have been tedious at times. Nonetheless, the crowd refused to let the band off the stage and was justly rewarded with an encore performance half as long as the concert itself. The most amusing part of the night, besides the delight of watching exceptional talent unfold in a blur of beats and banter, were a couple of G. Love groupies who over the course of the evening managed to sneak up on the stage and make a bee-line for the lusty singer before getting hauled away over the shoulder of one very timely security guard.