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No doubt
about it, this
band commands

---

By John Berger
Special to the Star-Bulletin

No Doubt vocalist Gwen Stefani was stating the obvious but the capacity crowd at Andrews Amphitheater went wild anyway.

"What a great show!" Stefani yelled out over the sea of waving hands and bouncing bodies that extended back across the grass and up to the top-most semicircular row of seats. No Doubt had been playing for well over an hour and the fans had long since become enmeshed in the experience. They were singing along to every song and responding to her every command.

Stefani and band repaid the fans with a tremendous show Saturday. She climbed onto the scaffolding to sing "Excuse Me Mr." Drummer Adrian Young dressed for the occasion by wearing a little more than the G-string he sports on the cover of the band's current "Return of Saturn" album and trumpeter Stephen Bradley did double duty as a dynamic go-go dancer when his horn wasn't needed. Thirteen-year-old Mililani Middle School student Gerri Fernandez and her friends Rose, Nova, and Alia, agreed that No Doubt was well worth the ticket price and the journey from central Oahu.

"The show just so rocked and they have such an awesome style and she's very unique. Her hair's cool and the guitarist (Tom Dumont) is so cool and she played my favorite song, "Just A Girl." It was wonderful! She puts on such great show and it was definitely worth everything we did to get here," Fernandez said seconds after the band closed with "Spiderwebs." She was clutching a tattered KPOI 97.5 bumper sticker that had barely survived her crowd-surfing session. She added that as KPOI's "No. 1 fan" she had searched in vain for a new KPOI sticker and finally pulled one off of someone else's T-shirt.

Moanalua High senior Aubrey Lee Glover summed up the show with a concise "Awesome!" and she and her date took off.

No Doubt earned such accolades. The pacing and overall energy level were excellent. The choice of material could hardly have been better. The sextet -- Stefani, Young, Dumont and Tony Kanal (bass) plus their "Return of Saturn" studio colleagues Bradley and Gabrial McNair (keyboards and trombone) -- opened with "Ex*girlfriend" and went on to feature over half the songs from "Return of Saturn" and a great collection of memories from their 1995 break-through, "Tragic Kingdom."

The crowd roared at Stefani's slightly X-rated version of "Ex*girlfriend" and went crazy when she customized "Just A Girl" with the line "I'm just a girl in Honolulu."

Young, Dumont, Kanal, Bradley and McNair worked as a solid unit behind her. Dumont had a great spot on "Don't Speak" while McNair brought his trombone out from behind the keyboards for some showy work during the encore.

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