As a front man, the lanky and loose Fitzpatrick has been compared to Bryan Ferry and David Byrne, and you can almost see it (if not hear it). With shrunken thrift-store jacket, worn Air Jordans, and a bleached stripe across his bangs, Fitz has the charisma of a studio nerd who says, what the hell, and makes a hilarious and sincere attempt at the Robot and finds some hang time with spontaneous scissor kicks. His vocals and movements never approximate the desperate force of classic soul men; he never pretends to do so. There's nothing ironic going on, and the emotion he conveys draws on the easy-going chemistry with Scaggs and the excellence of his songs. When you can make a keeper like "Winds of Change" your second number and shuffle in memorable new melodies (as on "6 AM"), you've got the makings of a real catalog with songs fans have already begun to learn by heart. Nor does it hurt to have a sax and flute player such as James King behind you; the solo on "Breakin' the Chains of Love" met an ecstatic crowd response.
"MoneyGrabber" at Vintage Vinyl:
To sum up that crowd: We were about as diverse as a group of white people could be. Oldsters with point-and-shoots jammed to the apron, Alive Magazine-types stoned and happy, kids who likely never knew the Duck Room existed, the recently breast-implanted, indie bros and brunettes, and the inevitable, monkey-drunk assholes. Two of the latter received a stern talking to from Scaggs, whose bantam-weight build and tattoos (devils, angels, dragons or all three?) indicated that there is no shit she will take, especially not from fist-pumping, track-suited jag-offs.
As the main set closed with an extended cover of the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" -- just before a tripartite encore of "We Don't Need Love Songs" (an old number), "Saturday's Child" (a Scott Walker cover), and "MoneyGrabber" (the band's only quasi-hit) -- Fitz and Scaggs trained the audience in call-and-response, and then accomplished the risky trick of bringing the entire room, back wall included, down to its knees or yoga squats, before signaling a full-on group spazz out -- the kind of ecstatic and silly rite-of-pre-spring ritual for which we'd all been long waiting.