I went to see John Hiatt and the North Mississippi Allstars last night at the Verizon Wireless theater in Houston. All in all, it was a great show.
It started out with the Allstars doing a set on their own which included several covers of old standard blues tunes. These guys are what I would call a solid rock/blues band. Not your traditional blues by any stretch and a few extraneous guitar runs here and there but solid none the less. Luther Dickinson is a stud with a slide and it was fun to watch him work. They did mostly covers of old standard blues songs with shout outs to the greats like Junior Kimbrough and a few notable others. Luther doesn't really have to vocal chops to pull off the blues like a Taj Mahal or some of the greats, but what do you expect, he's a skinny white kid. But, the band as a whole plays to their strengths, which means a lot more instrumental and a not a whole lot of white guy singing. For my money, that's a smart move. They closed out their set with two songs that I didn't see coming and thoroughly enjoyed. The first was the Rev. Al Green's "Love and Happiness" as sang by their mountain of a bass player, Chris Chew. All I'll say is he did the song right. From there, they went in to a really fun version of ZZ Top's La Grange. I imagine that song is always a crowd pleaser, and judging from the generous amount of white people gyrating and seizing like Vincent D'Onofrio as the Bug in Men in Black, it was popular last night as well.
Which brings me to a second thought. I go to a lot of concerts; enough that I stopped counting quite some time ago. I have a drawer at my house full of old ticket stubs if that gives you any idea. Anyway, I used to go and get up to the front and dance around like a lunatic. (Occasionally I still will, but the band/artist has to be out-fucking-standing for me to even consider it.) Anyway, I've noticed that of the wide array of concert goers there are very few who I don't find thoroughly annoying. It's also funny how predictable an audience for a certain artist will be. For instance, if you go to see a 20 something white kid sing and play the "blues" while making faces as if he's constipated, you're going to see a lot of mullets. If you go to see a good band that has recently had their video played one too many times on VH1, then you're going to have a gaggle of 18 year old girls screaming in your ear as if the band were the Beatles. You will then be thoroughly annoyed to the point that you may tap one of the various hooligans on the shoulder and give them a look that says "If, in your over exuberance for this mediocre band, you bump into me one more time, I'll rip out your entrails." If you go to see Itzhak Perlman perform with the local symphony, your likely to see a bunch of very polite normal people and then the one guy who thought he was going to a Jethro Tull concert. If you buy a ticket to see Snoop Dogg at a local club, prepare to have random friends make comments that they think you might be shot when in actuality you will spend all of your time trying not to punch random drunk fraternity rats. Finally, if you go to see John Hiatt and the Allstars, prepare to be surrounded by middle aged white people who have completely forgotten that they don't know how to dance, they have no soul and they sold out to "the man" in about 1985 when they got a real job and stopped paying attention to fashion trends. Oh, and someone needs to tell the 50 year old white women dancing at the front of the stage that screaming like a school girl and trying to dance in a "sexy" fashion stopped being cool and/or sexy about the same time that their rodeo queen hair went out of style. In other words, about 20 years ago. All they are doing at this point is causing their children to need therapy. Other than that, enjoy the fucking show.
OK, so at this point in the program, the Allstars head off stage and we are left to wait the obigatory 35 minutes for stage adjustments and whatever else it is that roadies do between acts. Personally, I think there just fucking with the audience to see how long we'll sit there before we get pissed off and leave, but I digress. Anyway, John Hiatt came on at about 9 and the Allstars were his backup band. I have to say, they are a fantastic band for him to sing with and I enjoyed hearing them play for the rest of the night. John did a great job too and he sang a lot of the well known songs he's written over his multi-decade career. Just in case anyone is curious, the setlist was: Perfectly Good Guitar, Child of the Wild Blue Yonder, Bring the Family, Lincolntown, Cry Love, Master of Disaster, Ain't Never Going Back, The Tiki Bar is Open, Native Son, Real Fine Love, Blue Telescope, Paper Thin, Riding with the King and Memphis in the Meantime. Encores were Have a Little Faith in Me and Slow Turning. Overall it was a great show and I can definitely say that the Allstars added a lot of energy and spunk to some of the old Hiatt standards. It was really neat to see them working together and playing off of each other on stage. I guess it was nice because John has the kind of tortured gravely voice that Luther doesn't so hearing the Allstars behind somebody with that kind of voice was a nice combination. One story of note told by John last night. He mentioned that his song Blue Telescope was a favorite of astronaut Rick Linnehan who happened to be in the audience last night. Apparently, Linnehan was on the Columbia in 2002 and Blue Telescope was played as the morning wake up call. John apparently thought that was really cool, but forgot to sing the song last time he was in Houston. So, this time he remembered, played it and gave a shout out to Linnehan making the comment "you just can't disappoint an astronaut."
Anyway, all in all, it was a great show.
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