Review

La Spezia, Italy
Stadio Comunale A. Picco
July 20, 2001


[Antonio Terni]

Review by Antonio Terni



You have to accept it with philosophy: one night you  have no  show 'cause
a thunderstorm floods the venue, and the night after you have a bad show
'cause Bob is in a bad mood. So you arrive home after a thousand miles 
driving in crazy italian highways with heavy rain, thousands of 'weekend'
drivers desperate to reach their holidays sites, hundreds of trucks beeing
diverted into your highway because of the Genova Forum, you sit down, drink 
a glass of white wine and you say to yourself: I can't wait till Pescara
tomorrow.  We should have understood from the beginning that things were rough:
the triumphal music started, it grew higher and higher up to the top of the 
climax.....and then it went downhill into it's conclusion and nobody was
on stage. After a couple of minutes Bob and the band appeared but of course
the effect was gone.

It was quite evident that Bob was in a bad mood, he never smiled, his 
cheeks blew intolerance, his eyes where fixed on nothing but infinity.
The question that bounced around the first rows was: who's gonna be the 
victim of Bob's angriness tonight? And after a few songs the answer was 
obvious: Charlie Sexton.

Bob seemed to me as just doing his job and trying to finish it as fast as
he could, he was having no fun, I can tell you. Just Like T.T.Blues is one
of my favorite songs and I would like it even if sung by Jerry Lewis, but
tonight was as flat as the Adriatic sea on a calm day. You could feel 
tension on stage: nobody was smiling, they kept looking at their 
instruments as if looking at Bob could provoke a thunderstorm worse than
the one in Udine.

Maybe I'm exagerating, maybe I'm getting too sophisticated  and I'm 
beginning to divide shows between good ones and bad ones, but until 
yesterday every show was great to me, but I preferred being naive and 
enjoying all the shows.

In fact the encores were much better, Bob found a girl in the first row
and began smiling at her and he decided to show her what a great rock&roller
he still is, and how sweet he can be on the acoustic songs and so the mood of
the band changed radically, Larry had a few smiles and everybody was much
happier. He was gettimg better and better and every song looked like the
highlight of the evening (and when you say to yourself that Blowin' is the
highlight of the show you realize how bad the first part was!)  until they
came for the second encore, a beautifull One Too Many Mornings whith a 
fantastic harp solo at the end. That solo itself will make this show 
memorable, but of course is like giving a drop of water to a thirsty man:
he will want more but there is nobody there to satisfy him.
Fingerprints of the show: he didn't say Juarez and he didn't introduce the
band at all. Ther may be other but they escaped my attention.
Sorry for the mistakes, but that glass of white wine in fact was half a
bottle.

a.terni@fastnet.it

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billp61@execpc.com

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