It was an exciting time for me and my best friend. Tickets to see INXS, one of our favorite bands, even if a bit delayed from the end of Rockstar:INXS, one of the best shows of the genre; it was a good thing. Yes, I know that Michael Hutchence remains dead and that INXS without Hutchence's Jaggeresque charisma is just not the same thing. It's like U2 without Bono -- which makes me remember that for a time in the 80's, INXS and U2 went head to head for the title of "best band in the world" in the post-Clash era. I could even make an argument that for a while, it was INXS.

Still, the band was mostly intact unlike "The New Cars" or other such recycling jobs. The band was the band and they'd done a very good job finding a singer. J.D. Fortune was a manipulative SOB, stirring the pot on Rockstar nicely. He wasn't the most talented or original, but the exit line for contestants on Rockstar was "You're just not right for our band, INXS." Fortune *was* right.

The concert was scheduled for an unusual venue - Clowes Hall in Indianapolis. A theater on a mid-major college campus, seating about 2000, isn't the normal milieu for a stadium rock band. I wondered if it would work, if the crowd would overwhelm the band or vice versa. Worse, a week before the show we got terrible news.

The opening act would not be Marty Casey, the Rockstar runner up. Instead, it was perhaps the worst singer in the world, Scott Stapp. Stapp, formerly the lead singer of Creed, is one of those guys who you wonder how he made it through life, then realize that dumb luck, good looks, and sycophancy do go a long way in the modern world. We decided that while you don't buy tickets to the train wreck, you don't turn away either -- though we did come in late.

The first song wasn't bad. It was actually the fourth or so, but first we heard. Our expectations were so low that only a William Hung cameo or a Clay Aiken duet could have lowered them further. Before launching into Creed's hit "Arms Wide Open," Stapp mumbled about his friends letting him down, about the birth of his son, and other shallow things said in such an earnest, self-absorbed manner that I recalled something a professor used to say about college kids. He called it the "Harvard effect" after where he first saw it as an undergrad. Every new student had been the smartest kid in his class and now saw their self-image reshuffled as they went from valedictorian to mediocrity. Some adjusted, some didn't, but the ones he liked to watch were the ones that didn't get it and thought that they were still the smartest guys in the room.

No one seems to have told Stapp that he's shallow. Bearing all the subtlety of Christian rock, Stapp sounded like the 4 am ramblings of a college freshman and moved like the evil teenage spawn of Eddie Vedder and Freddie Mercury mugging for the camera with all the bombast and none of the talent you'd expect from that mashup. Just as I thought it couldn't get worse, Stapp slipped in a couple lines from U2's "Pride", butchering it in a way that would made me wonder where Chuck Barris was when you need him.

Stapp mercifully exited early and after a brief intermission, the sounds of AC/DC's "TNT" brought the crowd back up to speed. A countdown projected onto the curtain heightened the suspense and served a purpose. As the curtain dropped, my expectations remained high. This was still INXS or as close as we can get.

From the first notes, the band sounded great despite a muddy sound mix that seemed to have replaced most of the Marshall amps with subwoofers. The deep sound of the Aussie pop stars was always immediately recognizeable, whether it was the jangly leads from Jon Farris or the sax solos from Kirk Pengilly. Fortune strutted out, echoing Hutchence vocally -- never more so than on "Mystify" -- yet inhabiting the band with his own presence. It would be easy for Fortune to do a tribute act, singing the songs the fans want to hear without injecting himself into it. He actually goes off script a bit more on the Hutchence tunes than he does on his own work off the new album.

Fortune doesn't look like Hutchence, but has some of the same charisma. His moves are still raw - his hands are cliched band-leader, following the notes or twitching Cocker-style. When he seems in doubt, he'll unbutton his shirt. He's confident yet searching, feeding off the audience and still maintaining his own aura. It took a couple songs to realize who he reminded me of but it was David Bowie. His voice is a mix of Hutchence and Bowie, but it's the sense that Fortune is playing a character rather than showing his character that really reminds me of Bowie. It's not a bad thing; this is a rock show, not a reality show now.

In other words, Fortune was right for the band. He puts on a good show, sounds good on his own songs and solid singing Hutchence's material. The band itself doesn't seem to have lost a beat. I wonder if INXS would be touring now if Hutchence had not have died young. The band was losing itself in the nineties, putting out good but not great albums while Hutchence was working on solo material before his passing. Perhaps they'd be reunited now and the band just as re-energized as they seem with Fortune fronting them. It's hard to imagine INXS without their lead singer, but it's hard to think of U2 without Bono or REM without Stipe. I can only hope that Eddie Van Halen makes one of these shows and realizes that it's about time he got a new lead singer.

On Stapp's last song, he screamed a lyric saying "I don't have to justify my life." Fortune oozed across the stage, reaching out to the crowd as he sang "I've got nothing to prove." It's a nice juxtaposition for a band that could still be going places, while the other guy tags along not realizing that his fifteen minutes were over. It's a show worth watching for both, though I'd advise you to get there late.

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Quick postscript: Rockstar starts a second season this summer. Instead of looking for a frontman for an existing band, they'll find one for a supergroup that includes Tommy Lee, Jason Newstead, and Gilby Clarke. Since Axl Rose is still working on his latest album, I guess he's not available. I'm a bit worried that Tommy Lee will get even more smarmy with the contestants than Dave Navarro did last season, but mostly I'm confused about how this will work out. Last year, the contestants sang their songs talent-show style, then staved off elimination by singing an INXS song. It was tense, but also did a great job of showing who could actually handle the job. I never took Marty Casey seriously as a contender before he blew the roof off of "Don't Change" and knew that J.D. Fortune was the winner when he did "New Sensation." What will this new group, dubbed "Supernova", do with nothing in the catalog? That the new band will be produced by the guy that brought us Pink and Avril Levigne makes me really nervous. I'd love to see someone like Van Halen, Alice in Chains, or Queen take the chair instead of this created group.

Of course, over on VH1 we have a similar concept without the talent show. "Supergroup" has a decidedly non-VH1 group of guys (Ted Nugent, members of Anthrax, Biohazard, and Skid Row) putting together a band in two weeks. Sure, it will work, but the mix of guys in the band should make for good TV. Evan Seinfeld of Biohazard and "Oz" has taken some time off from his new porn career (he's Mr. Tera Patrick ... which is oddly the real name of Carmen Electra, wife of Dave Navarro, host of Rockstar to Kevin Bacon this whole thing) to play bass. You don't get to use that sentence often enough. My friend points out that if you put Ted Nugent and Gary Busey in the same room on a reality show the world ends.