http://www.sun-sentinel.com/entertainment/...0,6776858.story

No Idol worship for nice guy David Cook at Sunfest, just a show that's easy to like

By Sean Piccoli | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
11:19 AM EDT, May 3, 2009

When David Cook sang David Lee Roth on Saturday night at Sunfest, with the American Idol champ covering Van Halen's Hot for Teacher, it was a good moment to reflect on the differences between rock stardom then and now.

Cook, 26, is the approachable guy who toiled in bands and worked as a bartender until he signed up for a televised talent competition. Roth, of course, is Roth -- an imperial showman who in his Van Halen heyday took worship as his due.

Like Cook, Roth came from the interior of the country and later reached the West Coast. But their routes to Los Angeles -- one to start bands, the other to tape Idol -- are as different as their music.

Cook turned in a steady, likeable set on Saturday in downtown West Palm Beach and handled a huge outdoor festival crowd with self-effacing humor. "We played in Gainesville last night for 450 people," he said. "This is a little bigger."

Cook and four band mates were up to the task and the scale of the occasion. The frontman sang in a weighty, handsome voice that has range and flexibility, delivering radio-tuned melodies and sustained, pitch-perfect rock screams.

He also put his charisma to the test, stepping off the stage to work the crowd up close. While his walk-through didn't cause a rock 'n' roll riot, it did keep people focused on the show -- no easy task after a full day of festival drinking, eating and suntanning.

Cook's songs -- most drawn from his self-titled, major-label debut -- were grunge in the the post-Seattle sense: somber, but not forbidding; hard-rocking, but mostly stripped of punk's rawness. Cook springs from the Bush-Creed-Lifehouse-Daughtry branch of the family. Grunge as invented by the dark hearts of Mudhoney, Nirvana and Soundgarden is a distant relation.

Cook presented Heroes, Declaration, Light On, Avalanche and Come Back to Me as affirmations of mutual love and honesty -- easily his two favorite subjects. "Here are my terms/Have some faith in me/and I'll let you be/who you need to be," he sang in Life on the Moon.

Lie was more provisional. Mr. Sensitive was more scathing and less noble. A Kiss on The Neck hinted at lust -- think Puddle of Mudd minus the undercurrent of domestic violence.

But Cook is mostly dealing in virtue, which made the randy Hot for Teacher a welcome bit of subversion.

Sean Piccoli can be reached at spiccoli@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4832. He blogs at sunsentinel.com/thebeat.

Thanks for posting! I love reading reviews of shows that I'm not even close to.

Thanks a million for posting this review!!!