Bigger and louder

What was bigger than Justin Bieber hitting Manila? For this concertgoer, it was Mr. Big, who hit Araneta Coliseum (thanks to Pulp magazine, Vernon Go and Grace Glory Go) for a Tuesday night show (with local openers Lip Service and General Luna) that proved metal boogie trumps aluminum spacesuits and haircuts any day.

Sorry, Mr. Bieber, but Mr. Big has earned its time in the spotlight. There’s a certain ‘90s patina to their sound: wailing guitar solos (courtesy of master shredder Paul Gilbert), memorable choruses and rock ballad vocals (by Eric Martin, no longer sporting the poodle locks, looking his age) underscored by madman bassist Billy Sheehan’s snaky bottom-dwelling leads. It’s the kind of stuff you’d hear in the ‘90s while getting your car detailed, or waiting in line at the deli. Ballsy rock, but with a sense of humor: a bit of the Zappa and Van Halen influence, what with Sheehan’s association with fellow LA boys Steve Vai and Dave Lee Roth. And they had some hits: stuff like Addicted to the Rush, rock ballad To Be With You and Green-Tinted Sixties Mind, and of course their remake of Cat Stevens’ Wild World, a huge local hit. As fellow writer Igan D’Bayan has pointed out in his column, they weren’t like the other hair bands of the ‘90s, bereft of chops and talent: no CC Deville crap noodling here. These guys can play their asses off.

Interesting, because I’d honestly never heard a Mr. Big song before Tuesday’s concert. I was going in cold. Yes, I’d heard Paul Gilbert play on YouTube, and was familiar with Billy Sheehan’s antics with the Dave Lee Roth Band. But I missed the whole Mr. Big phenom, perhaps because I shut off my radio around 1988 when I left college and hardly ever watched MTV during all those years. And I never got my car detailed.

Actually, Mr. Big are back with a new album (“What If…,” probably no relation to the Dixie Dregs album of the same name) after 10 years of internal turmoil, Mr. Gilbert quitting then returning, and possibly a few haircuts along the way. But they’ve retained their popularity, in part thanks to YouTube, which has elevated live-concert shred clips to legendary status. For those unable to attend on Tuesday, a cursory YouTube search will reveal tons of prime Sheehan and Gilbert guitar interweaving: Bach-like passages, jaw-dropping runs and bent-note solos that careen and wail, but never fall over the cliff.

“Want some jamming?”: Billy Sheehan and Paul Gilbert practice the ancient art of guitar weaving.

Sheehan, resembling an amiable rock version of Bill Nighy, provides most of the theatrics onstage. Whether running his forearm across the fretboard or tapping out mysterious emanations from Mars on his bass strings, he’s the one who seems to hold the band together, filling out the palette with various subsonic colorings. Gilbert, a lanky character in headphones throughout the show, seems in the grip of ecstasy as he effortlessly cranks out his pentatonic boogie leads. If there’s one thing Filipinos appreciate, it’s good musicianship with a touch of showmanship. Drummer Pat Torpey, a Mr. Big mainstay, made with the double-bass pedal rolls during metal boogie workouts like Shy Boy (an old Roth concert favorite) during the encore. He and Sheehan form a rock-solid rhythm section that out-kicks even Led Zeppelin.

Singer Martin kept alluding to the Bieber concert across town, as though the two bands were having a showdown. “All the parents are over here watching us, and the kids are all over there, watching Bieber…” Martin joked, to a chorus of boos. “Hey, come on! He’s just a kid, for God’s sake.” Actually, I was surprised to see a generational cross-section there at Mr. Big: young kids, fresh from the recent Pulp Summer Slam event, no doubt, mingled with older biker-looking types and brigades of black T-shirt wearers, all nodding their heads to the thud of Take Cover and Rock and Roll Over.

One quibble for fans was a muddled, muddy mix on the low end, which made it difficult to truly appreciate all that Mr. Sheehan was doing with his bass. This could have been the built-in acoustic limitations of Araneta (and all rink-type stadiums, actually) as a concert venue, though we seem to recall Nine Inch Nails had a very clean sound when they visited.

During the sing-along favorite Wild World, it was a hoot to see, not only lighters waving and swaying in the air, but people’s lighter apps on cell phones and iPods hoisted as well. Yup. We’re not in the ‘90s anymore.

Another thing you gotta love about Mr. Big: their album covers hark back to the days of Hipgnosis and those surrealistic/psychedelic visual tableaus they designed for Pink Floyd and other prog-type bands. Of course, since albums are scarce commodities these days, admiring album covers has become a dying occupation.

Speaking of showmanship, Mr. Big recognizes their raison d’être is not clothes or haircuts or wire stunts: they know people want to hear some serious noodling. “You want some jamming?” Martin asked the audience at one point before turning the spotlight over to Gilbert and Sheehan for an introspective stretch that turned into a blinding guitar duel; later Sheehan had a dazzling 10-minute section to himself, chock full of crazy tapping and counterpontal displays. That was a definite highlight.

What can we say about Paul Gilbert? I’ll never be him, but that’s okay, because there’s more than enough Paul Gilbert to last a lifetime. He never seems to run out of soloing avenues or lose sight of the time signature. What he actually says with his playing may be a little less than revelatory to me, but he really knows how to decorate a song with those crazy filigrees.

As though to prove the old Rolling Stones adage, “It’s only a rock ‘n’ roll circus” (or something like that), the band strolled back onstage at the first encore and swapped instruments — Gilbert on drums, vocalist Martin on guitar, drummer Torpey on bass and Sheehan on vocals — to belt out a rousing cover of Smoke on the Water. I nearly wept. Meanwhile, across town, a flock of Bieber haircuts felt the metal winds ruffling the backs of their necks.