Dave Davies ~ 2003 May 8 ~ The Southpaw ~ Brooklyn, NY
Band Personnel: Dave Davies, lead vocals, electric and acoustic guitars; Jonathan Lea, guitar and prerecorded samples; Jim Laspesa, drums and backing vocals; Derrick Anderson, bass and backing vocals
Set List
Till the End of the Day - Who's Foolin' Who - I Need You - Creeping Jean - Gallon of Gas/You're Lookin Fine - See My Friends - The Lie - Dead End Street - Rock You Rock Me - Flowers in the Rain - Death of a Clown - It Ain't Over Till It's Done - Bug/Transformation - Living on a Thin Line - All Day & All of the Night ... encore ... I'm Not Like Everybody Else - Father Christmas
Concert Review
This is an excellent venue in what I am told by the locals is the good part of Brooklyn. It was easy to get to on the Long Island Railroad. From the outside it looks like nothing -- like a closed storefront -- but once you get inside, it's fabulous. The walls are wallpapered with LP covers. The staff were all friendly and helpful. Before the show someone behind the bar was spinning records (vinyl, not CDs) and playing mostly obscure and very good punk, rock, and pop songs. The stage was high enough so if you were a little way back you could see over the heads in front of you, without being so high that the front row standees needed a chiropractor after the show.
The opening band started around 9:00 and they were fantastic! They were called Tiger Mountain, a four piece rock band, and they played excellent straight-ahead rock, sang unusually well, and had real stage presence, too. Their bass player reminded me of Dave Jenkins (one of Dave Davies' former bass players). Not the way he looked, but his body language while playing.
Dave came on a bit later and had visibly more enthusiasm than the night before. He started with "Till the End of the Day," followed by the wonderful "Who's Foolin Who" from Bug. The third song was "I Need You," but it's different than it used to be. Dave has always started that song by holding his guitar up to the speaker and generating a blast of feedback, but this tour he's skipping that exciting intro. It's missing something. I personally think it's unnecessary to play all four of the early power chord hit songs on one night ("I Need You, "You Really Got Me," "Till the End of the Day," and "All Day and All of the Night") but he did, two out of the three nights I saw him.
"I Need You" is not only missing that feedback intro, it's missing something else, the absence of which detracted from many of the songs. Keyboards. The last couple of years, with Kristian Hoffman in the band, I've gotten used to hearing a lot of really great keyboards on these songs. A song like "I Need You" might not need keyboards, but the last couple of years, those keyboards made it a better song.
I found myself listening to imaginary keyboards in my head on a lot of those songs, and I really couldn't restrain myself from running my knuckles along an "air piano" during "Death of a Clown" (the old fortune teller lies DEAD on the floor!). I don't think the Dave Davies Band is anywhere near as good without a keyboard player -- hey, it doesn't have to be Kristian but he was the best Dave's had -- and I hope he'll be back in the band the next time they tour.
An example of how the lack of keyboards affects this band was "Living on a Thin Line," which Dave played tonight after skipping it the night before. Now, to be fair I need to point out that Jonathan played a fabulous series of notes high up on the neck of his guitar that absolutely gave me the shivers, but on the other hand there is just something missing out of this song. You can't even start "Thin Line" correctly without a keyboard, and it just never gets going properly without the keyboard.
Another place where the lack of a keyboard affects the show is on "Death of a Clown." Dave has had a lot of people play the keyboard intro to that song -- Danny McGough, Kristian Hoffman, David Nolte, Nate Segal, Jonathan Lea -- and they were all good at it. (Those notes are so easy to play that even I can play the intro to "Death of a Clown" -- in fact I did, on a toy piano I found in an antique shop in Farmingdale, NY, the next day.) Anyway, this time out Dave doesn't have a keyboard, so instead he has a recorded sample of the intro. I wondered if he was going to have Jonathan press the button twice on the recorder. (In keeping with Dave's asking whatever keyboard guy he had in the band on a particular tour to play it twice.) Then later in the song they play a sample of original backing vocalist Rasa Davies singing the backing la-la-la from the original record. I suppose this was meant to be cute and funny but it just didn't work.
On to what was good about the show! Tonight was a better show than last night at the Sit 'n' Bull. He played about the same length of show -- 1 hour 45 minutes, 18 songs -- but he played with more enthusiasm, and the set list, although lacking the perfect "Come On Now," included "Thin Line" and an encore of "Father Christmas," which was great. That song began (since they didn't have a piano player who can play it live) with a short sample of the jingle-bell intro from the record, which normally gets played again late in the song, but tonight Dave waved off Jonathan when he was about to turn on the sample, and instead he played the jingle bell section on the guitar! What fun to see Dave being so spontaneous!