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... by Joanne Corsano ... joanne@picturelake.com

Ringo Starr
click thumbnail to see a photo gallery
of the concert

This time around, Ringo had six musicians in the All-Starr band. They all sang lead or backing vocals. I have listed them as they appeared on stage from left to right, top to bottom, and have mentioned the bands they were in if songs from those bands were played. The musicians sometimes switched instruments but I didn't keep track of all of that.

Warren Ham, percussion, saxophone, clarinet, harmonica; Greg Bissonnette, drums; Buck Johnson, keyboards; Steve Lukather, lead guitar (Toto); Hamish Stuart, bass guitar (Average White Band); Colin Hay, rhythm guitar (Men At Work)

And here's the set list -- Ringo took the lead vocal except when I put the name of the band. This format is a lot of fun -- kind of a "hits of the rock 'n' roll era" format.

Matchbox - It Don't Come Easy - Rosanna (Toto) - Pick Up the Pieces (Average White Band) - Down Under (Men at Work) - Boys - I'm the Greatest (that song John Lennon wrote for Ringo) - Yellow Submarine - Cut the Cake (Average White Band) (Ringo went backstage for this one) - Octopus's Garden - Back Off Boogaloo - Overkill (Men at Work) - Africa (Toto) - Work to Do (Average White Band) - Wanna Be Your Man - Who Can It Be Now? (Men at Work) - Hold the Line (Toto) - Photograph - With a Little Help From My Friends - (included 'Give Peace a Chance' chorus at the end)

By the way, if you consult setlist.fm about this show, there is a mistake; they have the track order wrong with showing I'm the Greatest before Boys. It's definitely the other way around; Boys came before I'm the Greatest.

Scroll to below videos for a review of the show.

Boys

Yellow Submarine

We've seen Ringo once before; he's had two changes in his backing musicians since. This guy is 84 years old and let's just say that rock 'n roll is working to keep him young. Not to mention the audience.

It's a lot different from every other show we go to. I couldn't bring the best camera 'cause it has detachable lenses, but they did let me bring in the Kodak bridge camera, and we had the front row in the balcony, so I did manage to get some better shots than the last Ringo show. I didn't realize this camera would do weird things with the focus (both sound and picture) when zooming in and out while taking videos, so I apologize for that, but at least I got wicked good closeups of Sir Richard, much better than the junk I would have gotten if I had relied on the phone at that distance.

The All-Starr Band format is simple and really quite brilliant. Ringo sings most of his songs while standing down in front of the stage while second drummer Greg Bissonnette handles the drumming. The exceptions to this are "Boys" and "Wanna Be Your Man," songs on which Ringo both drums and sings. I wonder how many times Ringo has performed "Boys" in the many decades. Between Ringo songs the other lead singers perform the songs from their groups (Toto, Average White Band, Men At Work), generally dating from the '70s and early '80s, while Ringo accompanies them on drums.

With the usual coffeehouse, library, or under the radar small venue, you don't go through a metal detector, and leave your phone and personal effects on a conveyor belt for inspection, and you don't then navigate your way past hundreds (thousands?) of people on their way to gamble away their paycheck for the week (hopefully no more than that). But then you're watching a member of the Beatles perform a truly excellent, and really fun concert. We engaged in conversation before the show with a fellow about our age sitting to our right who said (this is hard to believe) that it was only the second concert he'd ever been to. We refrained from saying it was only the second concert we'd been to this week. (Well, different people have different hobbies.)

I understand Ringo came down with a bad cold (fortunately nothing worse) and had to cancel the last two shows of the tour, so I'm feeling grateful I got to see him. The other singers were good, too. I very much enjoyed the funk element of Average White Band added in since the last time we saw them.