Concert t-shirts are $45 these days!

My apologies, dear reader, for the weeks-long absence of new posts. Call it Blogger's Fatigue. But I am back, inspired to tell you about the INXS show my husband and I witnessed in Detroit last Wednesday.

First and foremost, anything and everything about the show was better than if Ty had been the lead singer. Whatever criticisms I make about J.D.-led INXS, please take them with a grain of salt and realize that it could have been much, much worse.

Additionally, the show gave me the opportunity to explain to the wasted woman in front of me that Kick was not INXS' first album. So if I was able to expand at least one person's INXS horizons, I feel like I accomplished something. If you teach one person about INXS' back catalog, then you teach the world entire. Just like Oskar Schindler.

I am very happy for INXS. I am happy for the Farriss brothers and for Kirk and Garry. They deserve to be selling out shows, making money and rocking in the same exceptional fashion in which they've rocked for a quarter of a century. Seriously. They can do no wrong, and I will support their every endeavor until the end of time. That may seem overstated, but I owe them at least that much for the powerful way their music has shaped my life. I am very sincere about that.

However, it pains me to say that INXS is now five phenomenally talented and professional musicians and one inexperienced jackass. Granted, that inexperienced jackass is putting the five phenomenally talented and professional musicians back in the spotlight and attracting new, young fans to their music, but for us aging fans of Shabooh Shoobah it's as hard to swallow as my schizophrenic emotions. Does the new INXS feel so right? Does the new INXS feel so wrong? Help me!

The band opened their set with "Suicide Blonde," and I must admit my mouth dropped open in awe to hear this music, live, for the first time since 1993. It was like my entire past came rushing back at me, hitting me like a brick wall in a way that I can't explain without sounding completely trite. Not a note has changed. But then in came the vocals, "Don't you know what you're doing...." And it wasn't Michael's voice. If the music wasn't so spot-on, and you averted your eyes from all the Farrisses, they might have seemed like an INXS cover band.

J.D. just doesn't have Michael's range, especially in the upper register. He's OK in the lower parts -- "Mystify," "Need You Tonight" and "What You Need" were particularly good. But he cheated at several key points in several key songs, letting the audience sing the "Some of us don't know why-y-y-y-y-y-y" part of "Never Tear Us Apart." Cop-out. The moments that pained me the most were the final two lines of "Don't Change," where he sang the high part in falsetto. Those final "don't"s need to be belted, not whispered. That song has been closing INXS sets since the Falklands War, and it deserves the singer's full-on effort and respect.

As for J.D.'s stage presence, yes, he is magnetic and sexy, but he really needs to stop trying so hard. Michael was sexy in his innate elegance and restraint. My husband -- never one to shy away from commenting on the sex appeal of male rockstars -- says Michael had a certain on-stage dignity that Mr. Fortune sorely lacks. J.D. needs to stop humping the microphone stand, no matter how many teenage girls hold up signs reading "Jason taste me."

J.D. did sound great on the new songs off Switch, which of course would be the case because I never heard Michael Hutchence sing "Pretty Vegas." This is a good sign; he is right for their band, INXS, on the new material, which should set the stage going forward. But he needs to get some more live experience and develop his vocal range before he sounds right on the old stuff. As my bartender friend Chris says -- with a level of emotion and interest in the subject that is both surprising and refreshing -- J.D. needed a little more practice and experience before getting a gig this huge.

For this whole J.D. thing to work, he needs to join the band. Really be part of it. Not just some dude hired to mouth Michael's glorious lyrics in a half-assed fashion. If INXS is going to continue as INXS and not just a nostalgia act, they need to focus on the newer material, play a few greatest hits here and there, and keep writing. That alone can prove that INXS is a creative force with an eye on the future, not just a novelty act whose raison d'être died mysteriously in a Sydney hotel room in 1997.