Lovemongers Take Crowd To Holiday Heaven

The Lovemongers with Inflatable Soule and the Columbia Girls Choir, at the Paramount Theatre last Friday night.

It was almost like a Hallmark Moment. Perfectly framed in the proscenium of the Paramount was a picture that could have come off a greeting card: lights, wreaths, garland, choir, poinsettias, cute little Victorian street lamps and a beautiful Christmas tree. And when you opened it up, music played! If the Lovemongers "Ring Them Bells" concert was a Christmas card, it was the deluxe, embossed glitter-on-the-snowflakes variety, nothing "boxed" about it.

"Who said it doesn't snow in Seattle?" asked Ann Wilson when the Lovemongers came on stage, referring to the city's recent winter blast. The band took an easy start with Joni Mitchell's "River," a soothing seasonal song of passage. It was lovingly wrought and the capacity house responded warmly.

But they were hooting and hollering from the first notes of the next selection, "Battle of Evermore." The Lovemongers have made this old Zeppelin chestnut theirs.

The show next turned to the earliest days of Heart with a sweet performance of "Dreamboat Annie." It was definitely a crowd favorite. Those three songs would set the tone for much of the evening: the old, the new and a few things borrowed.

The Heart favorites included Nancy Wilson's rendition of "These Dreams," a raucous "Even It Up" and the climactic torch reworking of "Crazy On You." By the time Ann Wilson got to this one, toward the end of the evening, she had gone from warmed up to white hot.

The band introduced some new material, including "Cherry Blossom Road," and added a few new titles to their already eclectic list of covers. Nancy announced an end to "the acoustic part of the show" and kicked the band into "Pappa Was a Rolling Stone," part of the band's new four-song "maxi-single" CD. Ann declared it officially "party time" with a dance-friendly "Love Shack" that had the house up, and the horn section of the Seattle Rhythm and Blues Revue joined in for an anthemic version of Sly Stone's already anthemic "Everyday People."

But as a Christmas concert, what really put the proof in the figgy pudding was the finish. The Columbia Girls Choir came down the center aisle and with candles in hand, joined the Lovemongers on stage for "Here Is Christmas" and "Ring Them Bells." It was perfect. Every light and face was lit, everyone swayed to the Christmas carols and - honest - snow fell from the rafters. Perry Como couldn't have done it better.

Opening the show was Inflatable Soule. Peter Cornell and the rest of the band - vocalists Katy and Suzy Cornell, bassist Scott Elnes, drummer Jon Hedges and guitarist Joel Tipket - were churning from the moment they bounced onto the stage. And they never stopped bouncing. Soule had a lot to do with quickly pulling a good part of the lagging audience out of the bar and into the theater.