Pepper's spice stayed strong throughout night
By Maggie Beidelman
You wouldn't have seen a half-naked trio of toned guys courting a rowdy crowd-surfing audience at a Ben Lee concert.
Tuesday night's concert in the Leavey Center featured a band that's all about sex, love and reggae: Pepper.
Originally from Hawaii, this spicy band knows how to please the baked intoxication of a college crowd of approximately 1,300 students.
Two less explicit acts opened the concert, which was sponsored by the Activities Programming Board.
Out of Oakland came Push To Talk, a group of two guitars and a bass, a keyboard, and a catchy set of drums that performed in a fun, upbeat rock genre.
Ideal to get the crowd fired up for the main act, Push To Talk easily energized their small-band status to form a big star sound.
The second opening act, a couple of look-alike barefoot girls in black tight jeans and tank tops named Meg & Dia, played acoustic guitar and sang with some of the best set of pipes out there.
The girls' vocals are so impressive, in fact, that they currently have a video on MTV and several music videos online for their plugged-in songs.
Pepper also boasted some impressive attributes. Shirts off, guitars strapped to bodies slick from the crazed dance of performing, deep voices evoking perfectly in-tune tales of the lives and hormones of young men -- these guys didn't have to try very hard to excite their coed audience.
With a sound composed of elements from the music industry's three renowned R's Ã-- rock, rap and reggae -- Pepper kept their crowd constantly bumping to the beat of their lively music, a sharp contrast from last year's more subdued Death Cab For Cutie concert.
The crowd may have been lacking in size, as it filled up only half of the Leavey Center floor, but it by no means lacked in enthusiasm. Pepper encouraged crowd involvement, and the crowd responded.
Shoes flew about as adventurous students surfed the crowd, landing directly in the open arms of security guards eagerly awaiting them. "I'm having a good fucking time. What about you?" asked bassist Bret Bollinger, rousing the audience.
No doubt the response was in the affirmative.
The men from Pepper include bassist/vocalist Bret Bollinger, guitarist/vocalist Kaleo Wassman and drummer Yesod Williams. Originally from Hawaii, the band relocated to Southern California in 1999 and has toured the country several times with the likes of Snoop Dogg and 311.
They record with Volcom Entertainments and have created their own label, LAW Records, to promote music they love.
Pepper's fan base extends from Hawaii to New York, with many places in between.
In 2006, they headlined the Jagermeister Music Tour with Slightly Stoopid, who performed at Santa Clara last year during orientation weekend.
The pulsating excitement lasted all throughout the concert, culminating with the biggest crowd-pleaser of the night, "B.O.O.T.," featuring an especially elaborate guitar solo by Wassman.
Wassman later termed the performance "a sick show" for all the "beautiful kids" of Santa Clara.
Donning a fisherman's hat and a lot of bare skin, Wassman will perhaps be remembered for his eye-pleasing ability to somehow lean 45 degrees backwards while brilliantly screaming his guitar and making full use of his stage space.
Tuesday's performance was the first of Pepper's tour for their sixth and appropriately named album, "No Shame."
The band didn't hesitate to explicitly express their true feelings throughout the night: "We got the mosh pit, we got some fuckin' beautiful girls and this is a good time y'all," raved Bollinger.
The lovely, lusty college crowd responded with vigorous agreement.
Possibly most well known for their hit "Give It Up" (aka "Dirty Hot Sex") from their album "Kona Town" in 2002, Pepper's music can be previewed and purchased on iTunes or Napster music stores online.
Contact Maggie Beidelman at (408) 551-1918 or mbeidelman@scu.edu.