In the grand tradition of jazz and soul headliners, legendary funk saxophonist Maceo Parker gave his band a few minutes to kick into high gear before joining them onstage. As musicians and audience alike shouted "Come on, Maceo!" Parker, dressed to kill in a black double-breasted suit, bounded onstage and wasted no time unleashing a barrage of his signature, syncopated sax lines. Seems Parker picked up a few frontman tricks during his years helping James Brown and George Clinton pioneer funk.

\\Sliding around onstage like a man half his age, the 53-year-old Parker engaged his audience in a marathon game of Simon Says Shake Your Groove-Thang, serving up stylized soul covers and several of his own contributions to the funk canon. With call and response chants, Brown-influenced mantras, and a set list peppered with classics like Wilson Pickett\rquote s "Mustang Sally" and Marvin Gaye\rquote s "Let\rquote s Get It On," Parker maintained the party atmosphere of an age gone by for three solid hours.

\\Unfortunately, both Parker and his audience pay a price for the party. At the beginning of the decade, Parker was riding high on the success of the jazz-oriented "Roots Revisited," which topped Billboard\rquote s jazz chart for more than 10 weeks. It seemed the veteran sideman had finally found his niche, pushing his music into a more sophisticated realm without completely forsaking his bread-and-butter style. (The forty-somethings who comprised the majority of his live audience in those days often got more than they bargained for when Parker would announce, after playing a couple of straight-ahead jazz numbers, that he was going to play "two percent jazz and ninety-eight percent funky stuff.")

\\But as a new generation explores the sources of the samples that fuel hip-hop, Parker's audience has gotten younger -- and his concerts have come to reflect that change. He all but ignored his jazzier material in favor of crowd-pleasing songs in the bass-heavy P-Funk vein. As his manager put it later, "Maceo is catering to the kids who *think* that they have discovered something new."

\\There's no question that Parker puts on one of, if not *the* g