Living Colour Flex Their Staying Power at Chicago's Bottom Lounge

When you're a band that's been mostly defined by a single song, I imagine it's something of a double edged sword.

Take Living Colour for example. The New York City quartet (outside of a 5 year break in the late 90's) has been together for 40 years. They've sold millions of albums. They have two Grammys for Best Hard Rock Performance among four total nominations. On top of that, they were also named Best New Artist at the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards (hard to believe now, but that used to actually be a big deal back then). In their fifth decade as a band, they're still touring and selling out shows across the country.

And if you ask the average rock fan how they know Living Colour, I'll bet the overwhelming first answer off the top of their head will be the band's breakthrough 1990 hit "Cult of Personality". And it's not without reason - the song was a massive hit for them. Not only did it peak at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100, but it helped secure the band's first Grammy win and is, if I may speak scientifically, a fucking rad song.

The reason it continues to be so strongly associated with Living Colour over any of their other work is how well the song has aged and only grown in popularity when it comes to pop culture. When we got into the lat 90's and early 2000's and everything in the music world HAD to be ranked, the song started popping up all over the place. It ranked No. 69 on VH1's 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs, as well as the solo ranking No. 87 on Guitar World's "100 Greatest Guitar Solos" list. These accolades are all fine and good, but a 1-2 punch in the late 2000's put the song back on the map almost 20 years after its initial ascent up the charts:

1. Rock Band was weirdly popular for quite a bit, which led to tons of rock hits from the 80's and 90's having a second life with a younger generation, "Cult of Personality" being one of them.
2. CM Punk, one of the biggest wrestling stars in recent memory, used the song as his entrance music for matches. If you don't watch wrestling, it's hard to describe...but it's kind of a big deal. And definitely something that's going to get embedded in the brains of countless adolescent males across the country.

Obviously no band is going to complain about success, but still touring in 2024, still selling out venues like Chicago's famous Bottom Lounge...there's so much more to Living Colour than just one song. No band could have this much success for this long on one song if there wasn't. With a capacity crowd waiting for them on an unseasonably mild February day in Chicago, Living Colour took a night off of their tour with Extreme to headline a show with Missouri's own Radkey in tow.

Radkey is a band that I will always have a personal connection with. As someone who took up photography during COVID lockdowns, I started to pivot toward concert photography in early 2022 trying to combine two of my passions into one. Radkey was the first band I ever brought a camera to a venue to shoot, back when they played Chicago's Empty Bottle where you didn't need a photo pass to bring a camera in. And while my performance with the camera was just so-so (you can see the results here), the dudes in Radkey (Dee, Solomon, and Isaiah Radke) were absolutely on point, delivering a crunchy set of self-proclaimed delicious rock noise with the intensity and volume that demanded a bigger venue. And on the subject of venues, there aren't many in Chicago that Radkey haven't played. The constant road warriors were making their sixth stop in the Windy City since August 2021, including playing both Lollapalooza and Riot Fest over that time. Despite returning to my fair city with such frequency, I had not had a chance to catch the Radkey boys in action.

The good news is that their live show seems to have only honed itself with the time spent perfecting it on the road. The capacity crowd at the empty bottle was treated to a tight, thunderous 30 minute riff-and-groove fest that alternated from straightforward stomp ("Dark Black Makeup") to head-bobbing grooves ("Love Spills") to just straight up fists-in-the-air shouts and insanity ("Romance Dawn"). And while the clockwork riffage that Dee throws down in every song certainly deserves the credit it gets, don't overlook how important the rhythm section is in driving every Radkey song forward with the same intense momentum. Usually stuck in the back of the stage where it's hard to see him, Solomon was front and center (literally) smashing his way through every song with the exact amount of mayhem it needed. And while Isaiah's constant dance moves frequently carried him offstage and out of view of the audience himself, his presence on every song is felt like someone squeezing their hands around your heart and using it to keep the beat to one of the best rock songs you've heard in ages.

I've been lucky enough to be in the photo pit for a good number of shows since I started photographing concerts. I've seen my fair share of guitar pedal setups.

Nothing prepared me for what I saw with Living Colour's layout. Both the guitar and bass effects pedal boards took up a non-insignificant amount of the stage. And I'll be damed if guitarist Vernon Reid and bassist Doug Wimbish didn't use every single one of them throughout the course of their 19 song set.

The effects pedals were a nice metaphor for one of the reasons Living Colour has been able to maintain as a band for as long as they have - their trademark sound isn't really a single sound. Rather, it's more of an amalgamation of heavy metal, hip-hop, funk, jazz and straight up alt rock (sometimes in the same song). With a setlist that focused heavily on 1993's Stain (playing 11 of the 13 tracks, with a good chunk of the album played straight through in order), the band fused together their signature mix of rock sounds, sounding like they could have inspired Red Hot Chili Peppers with one song, and Sevendust with the next. And sometimes that's all on the same song, like on crowd favorite 'Wall' where thrash metal riffs chug along over a bass riff so funky it makes the Seinfeld theme hide in absolute shame.

The beauty in seeing a Living Colour performance is witnessing how all of those seemingly chaotic elements fit together so perfectly. What sounds on paper like it would be an absolute jumbled mess is pefectly navigated by Reid and Wimbish (equally supported by drummer Will Calhoun, throwing down the structure holding the entire thing intact) into an absolute gut-punch of sound that doesn't let your ears know what it's about to be hit with next.

As tight as the rest of the band sounded, it's singer Corey Glover that's the x-factor bringing the entire experience to a thunderous head. Banging his head and jumping around the stage like a man half his age, Glover's voice is as good as it's ever been, bringing unexpected depth and soul to his cover of 'Nothing Compares 2 U' while still having the edge to make songs like 'Cult of Personality' kick just as hard as they did the first time you heard them. In a day and age where even younger bands sometimes need to adjust the octaves of some of their songs live to fit their singer's comfort zone, seeing Glover's continued mastery over their six albums worth of material with the urgency and ferocity that it continues to deserve, is a sight to behold.

With the vibe of a band both having a blast together while still railing against the ills of society, Living Colour convincingly proved once again why they continue on as a force to be reckoned with in the rock and roll world, so much more than the single song they may be best known for.

Even if it is one of the hardest rocking songs ever. Not a bad legacy to have either way.

Living Color is on tour through the end of the month. Tickets and dates can be found here.

Living Colour Setlist - Bottom Lounge, 2.8.24

Kick Out the Jams (MC5 Cover)
Go Away
Ignorance Is Bliss
Leave It Alone
Bi
Mind Your Own Business
Auslander
Never Satisfied
Nothingness
Funny Vibe
Postman
This Little Pig
Time's Up
Nothing Compares 2 U
Wall
White Lines (Don't Don't Do It/Apache/The Message)
Love Rears Its Ugly Head
Type
Cult of Personality