The Dave Davies Band ~ 2002 May 5 (Sunday) ~ Ramapo Valley Brewery ~ Suffern, 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
Till the End of the Day - I Need You - Susannah's Still Alive - Gallon of Gas intro/You're Looking Fine - Tired of Waiting - Set Me Free - See My Friends - I'm On An Island - The Lie - Bug/Debug/Life After Life - Dead End Street - Picture Book - Fortis Green - Death of a Clown - Living on a Thin Line - All Day & All of the Night - I'm Not Like Everybody Else - David Watts - You Really Got Me
Concert Review
This club had a Sit 'N Bull sort of feeling. The stage was small and low to the floor, but the club was friendly and the staff made an effort to treat both Dave and the band and the audience right. The menu featured a reasonable variety of pub food, and I even ordered a pulled pork sandwich in honor of the Sit 'N Bull. There was an excellent hand-drawn board at the ticket table featuring a sketch of Dave, advertising the show.
I wound up sitting at a table in the front. I had originally thought we would be allowed to stand, since there was a dance-floor like space in front of the stage, but the club staff filled the space up with tables as more fans started coming in. Avoiding this confusion next time would be an improvement. The stage was too low to really allow standing anyway.
The opening act, a singer/guitarist, started so early we were still eating, and therefore I didn't pay enough attention to him to say anything much about him. The second warmup was Michelle Vecchione, a singer/guitarist/keyboard player who wore a cowboy hat, making me wish Dave would borrow it later and play "Lincoln County" (a song I greatly miss ever since Dave quit playing it when he lost the cowboy hat he would always wear during it). Michelle and her second guitarist played a pleasing variety of country and familiar pop songs, just the right sort of opener.
Dave and the Ravens came on before 9:00. The stage was so small that Jim and his drums were crammed onto a raised platform in the back at an angle to the rest of the stage. Kristian hardly had room for one keyboard, never mind two, and during "Debug" he had to face away from the audience while playing that second keyboard. During the one or two songs when Brian was on stage, he was standing in a corner about one foot square to the side of Kristian. Dave didn't have room to move around much, never mind jump. (This was definitely the kind of place where Dave would check the ceiling before doing one of those rock-star moves at the end of a song.) Only David Nolte on bass, on the right side of the stage and toward the back, had enough room. It was, however, an attractive looking stage -- the walls were made out of plaster made to look like a cavern, and there was a fake tree with holiday lights decorating the right of the stage. And most important, the sound was very good.
Dave was in a good mood, joking around and acting looser than at any of the other shows I've seen this tour. Getting treated right by the club staff might have put him in this good mood, or maybe he was happy it was an early night. The set lists this tour not only have been shorter than in the past, they haven't featured much variety from night to night, and I've missed the lighthearted spontaneity of other tours. (Is Dave treating the tour more "seriously" this time out because he has an album to promote? Maybe the other tours were more "fun" because he was taking them in more of a nothing-to-lose spirit.) This night, however, maybe catching a bit of that Sit 'N Bull spirit, Dave played a series of familiar notes and told the audience that if they recognized the song he'd play it! It took me about .8 second to figure it out and everyone in unison shouted "I'm On An Island"! Dave had a lot of fun singing it, to Kristian's splendidly inventive steel-drum-sounding keyboard accompaniment.
For much of the show the only lighting was a spotlight on Dave with the rest of the band in semi-darkness. They did have a strobe light which was used effectively during "Bug/Debug/Life After Life." I like this number more every time I hear it, although I was sorry that only the "Bug" medley and "The Lie" were featured from the new album. It seems to me that since Dave is touring to promote a new album, it would be in his best interest to play four or five songs from it every night. One of the band members told me they had rehearsed two more of the songs from the album, so maybe some of you will get to hear them later in the tour.
My opinion on this tour is that the shows have all been too short and not up to Dave's former standards of fun. The shows have topped out at 19 songs (bottoming out at 15), as opposed to the 23-24 he used to regularly play during 1997 & 1998. The "Bug" medley is long and very exciting, but it's still only one song. As for Dave's song selection, I had the interesting experience the other day while doing some house cleaning of coming across some printouts from the Kinks Preservation Society mailing list digest from 1997 and 1998, and everyone raved at the time about Dave's song selection. But nowadays those raves have died down, as Dave plays essentially the same set every night, even telling the same jokes every night. Of course, one can argue in Dave's defense (and the defense of other performers who do this) that the show is aimed at people who have never, or seldom, seen it before, and not at nutcases like me who chase around after the band for a week or more. But I wonder, is Dave doing this because it's a job, something he can make a living at, or does he do it because he loves playing the guitar and singing? (I like to think it's both.) Wouldn't he love it even more if he shook up the set from night to night? Wouldn't it be more fun for him, for the band, and for the audience, if he varied the show more? He could easily put together a completely different set list from songs he's played before during other tours. (Think "Imaginations Real," "Unfinished Business," "Milk Cow Blues," "Lincoln County," "Funny Face," "Young and Innocent Days," "Look through Any Doorway," "She's Got Everything," "Beautiful Delilah," "Charity," "Love Gets You," "Nothing More to Lose," "There is No Life Without Love," "Mindless Child of Motherhood," "I Am Free," "Love Me Till the Sun Shines," and more.)
That being said, I will, however, come to Dave's defense in the matter of him sticking around afterwards to sign autographs. I have heard some complaints that Dave hasn't made himself available to the fans very much. The fan-performer contract says the fan will buy the ticket and act appropriately during the concert, and the performer will give the best performance he's got in him that night. That's it. It doesn't say anywhere that the performer will give an autograph, a hug, a handshake, a minute or two of conversation. Those things are bonuses -- extras -- they are not something the fan has any right to expect. And anyway, more often than not, Dave does give those bonuses -- he's usually available for autographs after a show. At the Suffern show he was around the corner of the stage for quite some time after the show meeting fans. I don't understand how anyone could complain that in this case he wasn't available.
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