In a previous post I signalled I was going to the Paul Young gig in Utrecht. That was last night.
Veronica Fuscaro, a Swiss singer/songwriter opened the show. Not my music but she has a very good voice. She had a guitar with her and a 2 microphone set up with 2 electronic wizardry apparatus at her feet. One was the basic pedals etc guitarists use. The other was a mystery. After her opening song she explained what it was. It was a sort of loop/reloop machine reacting to sounds picked up by one of the mic's. She started each song drumming a beat on her guitar followed by a couple of bits of background singing and rhythm guitar. The machine appeared to have about 8 keys/pedals and she did a bit of a dance on them to get the background working the way it's supposed to. She then started the song and the "lead" guitar work. Impressive.
Then we got the main show. In his set, PY played 2 songs from his newest album and they were OK, no more than that. The rest of the set was some of his older stuff and some cover songs such as one based loosely on "Memphis Soul Stew", part of the "Stew" saw him singing "aint gonna bump no more with no big fat woman". At several junctions he appeared to run out of breath and not finish a line of a song. Classics of his such as Common people and Lay my hat, amongst others showed a very limited vocal range and nowhere near the range he once had. Little audience communication and he seemed to be "going through the motions". The band was, musically, tight and the 2 background singers came over well and appeared to be enjoying themselves. The band had no connection with the crowd. By the end of the 70 minutes 20% had already left. PY and the band left the stage and the audience (probably half of what was left) headed for the exit, us included.
Complete and utter waste of an evening apart from the meal we had in the restaurant before the show which was very good. This now has me worrying Gladys Knight in June might be of a similar quality. Also has me doubting whether I'll bother with tickets for "an evening with Betty LaVette".
Ratings:
Victoria 7
Background singers 7
Band 6
PY 2 at a push