The Dave Davies Band ~ 2002 April 27 (Saturday) ~ Downtown ~ Farmingdale, NY
Band Personnel: Dave Davies, lead vocals, lead guitar; Jim Laspesa, drums and backing vocals; David Nolte, bass and backing vocals; Kristian Hoffman, keyboards; Brian Myers, guitar tech and extra guitar
Set List
Concert Review
The venue tonight was called Downtown on Main St., Farmingdale, NY, a small city in western Long Island with a small town feel. There's a great vinyl and oldies record shop on Main St., a thrift shop where one can often buy nice stage clothing, and some good restaurants. My Concert Going Partner and I chose Annabella's, a nice Italian restaurant, for dinner, adding "Wicked" to its name for the occasion.
We were five for five in good venues this week. This one had another roomy stage, good sound, a dance floor with plenty of room for standing, and a few seats. It was a good sized crowd, essentially a sell-out.
The first opener was the Erik Stuart band, three guys with guitars who sang excellent melodic pop-rock. Apparently the band normally has a drummer, but they were called at the last minute by the club to open the night and they couldn't reach their drummer, but they sounded just fine in the three-man version.
The second opener was a George Thorogood wannabe, Andy Aladart and the Rhythm Kings, whom I hated from the first second they started playing. They were ear splittingly loud, and the guitarist so obviously fancied himself the second coming of some guitar god that I just couldn't stand even looking at him. Plus he reminded me of my dentist. As they were closing their set, there was some unpleasantness among a member of Dave's management and the band and the club as to how much longer they were going to play.
Dave subsequently played a disappointingly short set, only 15 songs. This was my 50th Dave show (please, no applause) and I have seen him play a disappointingly short set only three times. At least this time the quality was exceptionally good up till the very end. The show was going along smoothly. In fact, it was fantastic, the crowd was great, the band was "on," Dave's singing and playing were terrific, they played "Bug/Debug/Life After Life" and people loved it, he played the beautiful "Flowers in the Rain" and the previously rowdy, Saturday-night crowd quieted down to listen to it, and all of a sudden he was skipping songs he always does. After "Flowers in the Rain" he played only three more songs. I could see looks even on the band members' faces wondering what was going on. Explanation? Someone suggested that Dave's management was angry because they had originally been told there would be only one opening band. Or maybe Dave just started to feel sick and wanted to get off stage. Who knows? All I know is it was a great show up until it got shortened a bit, and I went home happy.
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