Location: Ljubljana / Križanke / Slovenia
Concert date: 05.08.2006
Attendance: 3
Ticket price: 8.900,00 (37,14€)
For the second time in three years we ran into Mr. Mick Hucknall, the boss of Simply Red, in Ljubljana. A packed show in the middle of summer, when you’d expect everybody to be roasting somewhere (at the very least) in Dalmatia, soaking in the water and squirting each other with water pistols, was a nice surprise.
So Hucknall and the backing band (Simply Red, all together) came shuffling onto the stage around 21:45. The support act had their 30 minutes, which of course I missed again (ah, that damn shoving through every possible barrier between living and non-living objects), and I barely made it in time to find a spot in the hall in front of the first step in the standing area at Križanke (there were no seats), practically right under Hucknall’s nose (about 5 m from the stage). To see Simply Red totally up close. The wonder of wonders.
Some of the views were extremely interesting. Most of the audience was made up of members of the gentler sex, permed to the max, and their companions this time looked truly like “bewildered, out-of-tune gnomes” who don’t quite know what they’re looking for at a Simply Red concert besides their girlfriends. Either way, it was the women who set the pace for Simply Red this time. Whether that was enough, I’ll reveal shortly.
Simply Red turned the setlist somewhat upside down just for the Ljubljana show. They put one song fewer on it than usual, and the brand-new ones on it were All Down The Line, Look At You Now and Out On The Range. Hucknall scratched the song Lady, which opened most shows on the tour, as well as the Small Faces cover Debris and Something For You. In short, the concert started out rather restrained on the crowd’s side, while the band instantly played perfectly tuned and tight, right “out of the gate”. The sound was excellent, the volume just right and the performance simply outstanding. A rhythm section of the black Lewinson brothers, rock-solid and unerring like a well-oiled Swiss watch, an imposing trio of horns swapping instruments between flute/tenor sax, trumpet/alto sax and trombone/percussion, plus the excellent sax soloist Ian Kirkham, who set the crowd ablaze with a few outstanding solo spots, keyboardist Dave Clayton and two black female singers all “safely” surrounded Hucknall, and everything looked deliberate, calculated and chewed over one more time for good measure, so that any chance of mistakes and unwanted stray moments on stage during the tour was simply ruled out, or rather eliminated. Sure, Hucknall also has a guitarist, but Kenji Suzuki just had to get into the role of an extra and make peace with it. He found himself in the spotlight for the first time during an extremely short solo bit in Look At You Now, even though he was dressed up the flashiest of everyone on stage.
People first jumped around in earnest at Holding Back The Years. The audience took part with real feeling and gave Simply Red the kind of support any band could only wish for. Anyway, interesting! Simply Red somehow didn’t want to cash in on it and, surprisingly, didn’t add fuel to the fire by talking to the crowd or firing it up. I’ll go further. Hucknall proved to be an extremely lame communicator, totally uninterested in the audience, and in the same vein offered very sour contact and interaction to the people who’d come to cheer for him. He first stepped up to the mic properly and took a few meager moments for the audience to announce the Bob Dylan cover Positively 4th Street. You could split the concert into two parts. Up to Come To My Aid, a dancing audience and Simply Red, and the second part, basically from Come To My Aid to the end, a crazed audience and again “just” Simply Red – no adjectives. Lukewarm on stage, as if Hucknall were “saving himself”. He also left quite a few lead vocals in the chorus to the two backing singers and the audience. Well, I won’t say no. Of course we got his distinctive, sophisticated “soul” approach to the classics and biggest hits of Simply Red, but that was a long way from Simply Red so much as stretching the fingers of their left hand.
This time the routine performance screamed to the heavens, along with the band counting down the minutes so they could “pack their bags” ASAP and hit the road out of Ljubljana. What stung the eye incredibly sharply was the moment Hucknall, still in the middle of Something Got Me Started, started waving at the people and left the stage. Since everybody else kept playing without Hucknall, I thought his stomach had turned and he had to step aside to relieve himself, but I was sorely mistaken. Barely an hour and ten minutes had passed. Simply Red wrapped up the regular set at the thirteenth song. Hello? Knock, knock!!! Anybody home? All the other musicians exchanged glances on stage and just stood there for a few moments as they played out the ending and finished the song, since they too had to say their goodbyes and follow their leader. That’s definitely a minus. The leader says goodbye on behalf of the band. It’s like a captain abandoning a sinking ship and leaving the crew to its fate. And the people were fired up and pumped to the end, thirsty and hungry for a good time, and wanting a good gig they kept singing and were genuinely thirsty and hungry to soak up a great concert and be entertained to the max. Well, the first whistles followed quickly too. After five minutes they’re back and carry on with the “missed” Stars and Fairground, after which Hucknall once again starts flinging his arms deep into the air in “princess and the pea” style, back turned to the audience on his way out, as if to say: “Ciao, folks!” Same picture again. Luckily they hadn’t yet hit “playback” and turned on the house lights. So the band took pity on the people one more time and added Sunrise and the ballad If You Don’t Know Me By Now, and closed the show. Hucknall bowed, yelled Simply Red and pointed his hand at his band. Funny and sad, really. His musicians, surely hungry to play, said their goodbyes to the folks, and you could see they were in shape for at least another hour of good “jamming”. If he’d given them at least 10 minutes for an instrumental number, this report would have sounded totally different too. He’d have killed two birds with one stone. He’d have spared me the grumbling about the too-short running time, and the griping about the lack of energy in the performance itself, which Hucknall has only himself to blame for. Like a coach who doesn’t know how to use the potential of his highly talented players. Remember why Argentina went out in the quarter-finals of this year’s World Cup?
Brrrr, I was left chilled. For a quick dig: this energy was incomparable to what a classic rock or metal gig delivers. Even an average one. There, for the same price Simply Red asked for themselves, bands break their backs at their shows, tear themselves in half, in thirds, and give it everything, and not for a mere 80 minutes but at least 1:50 or more (with the exception of the crippled W.A.S.P.). Well, the crowd is totally different at pop shows too, if I can call Simply Red that. Mostly less demanding than a rock crowd. So after the show there was no grumbling to be felt from the 3,000-strong crowd, who dutifully and obediently filed out of Križanke. If a band at a “rock” gig started closing the show after one hour and 20 minutes, their fans would stone and lynch them. So for the same ticket price as Whitesnake three weeks ago, Simply Red offered much, much less music.
The feeling that Hucknall was holding back, protecting his voice, and that dropping the barrier and building real contact with a crowd craving exactly that was too much bother for him was incredibly irritating. Routine performance and goodnight! By the end I no longer knew myself whether I’d come to the wrong concert and don’t belong at Simply Red at all, or whether there are simply bands who can afford coldness, minimalism and routine in such a blunt way, because their base of listeners and fans never learned to demand anything else. I’ve got nothing more to add. I expected more. Besides the eternal grumbling over the tight doors at the Križanke entrance, which once again showed that Križanke is a seriously awkward, unsuitable place for acts like Simply Red, it was the pale impression left by the performer that really sealed the deal. Thanks to the devoted audience, the precise sound and the tight playing, I can say the concert was good, but far, far from being burned deep into memory. Well, it did get burned in, but this time because of all the remarks above, mostly in a negative light.
Setlist
1. Home Loan Blues
2. Out On the Range
3. Look At You Now
4. Holding Back The Years
5. Positively 4th Street
6. Thrill Me
7. Oh What A Girl
8. Come To My Aid
9. Fake
10. Right Thing
11. All Down The Line
12. Moneys Too Tight
13. Something Got Me Started
—encore I.—
14. Stars
15. Fairground
—encore II.—
16. Sunrise
17. If You Don’t Know Me By Now
