Show & Venue Reviews
Please share your Tom Jones shows with other fans. Setlist? Audience? Energy? What was it like being there? We’d love to hear from you.
And, while you’re telling us about the shows, please let us know what you think of the venues where Tom plays. Clubs, theaters, casinos — Tom Jones performs in all of them. Which venue do you think is the best? The worst?
So that other fans will know what’s in store when they buy their tickets, please tell us a little bit about the venues you know. If possible, try to use the format below so others can tell at a glance what you think. The best venue will merit ****. More than one review of a venue is welcome.
Concert Review: Rochester, NY/February 26, 2006
Monday, February 27th, 2006Concert review: It’s not unusual: Jones, 65, still a tomcat
Jeff Spevak Staff music critic, Rochester (NY) Democrat & Chronicle
(February 27, 2006)
What’s new, Pussycat?
Not much, because Sunday night at the Auditorium Theatre, Tom Jones showed he can still deliver the goods.
You would have been disappointed if you had been looking for a train wreck of a 65-year-old singer, who admitted during the show that he enjoys dangerous habits like drinking champagne and smoking Cuban cigars with Jerry Lee Lewis.
A little puffier, with a goatee and hands darting daringly close to his erogenous zones, Jones is still throwing hip-checks at middle-aged women. He wiped the sweat from his brow, purred like a big cat, shook his butt and blew away 1,800 people in a show way, way better than the rest of you could ever dream possible.
She’s a Lady got the women trickling down the aisles to throw underwear onto the stage. But by Sex Bomb, it was a riot for the middle ages, with women streaming toward the undulating center of their adoration, dancing and twirling their underwear overhead like lariats as a couple of security guys needlessly tried to hustle them away from the stage. Is Jones supposed to be afraid of some grandmas — really, there were a couple — armed with empty brassieres?
But plenty else is new, kitties. Among his several career makeovers, Jones has increasingly turned to the idea of remaking smartly picked contemporary pop songs. In 1988, he had a nice hit with Prince’s Kiss, a Sunday highlight. As were Randy Newman’s You Can Leave Your Hat On — with Jones ripping off his tuxedo jacket to the challenge — Lewis’ “End of the Road,” Howlin’ Wolf’s Three Hundred Pounds of Joy (slimmed down to 200 pounds by Jones) and Newman’s Mama Told Me (Not to Come), better known as a Three Dog Night hit.
And Jones’ musical adventurousness showed through on one of the highlights of the night, a bluesy St. James Infirmary.
Jones survives being buried in an avalanche of cheese because he has an impish sense of humor about himself, prancing around like a kitty for What’s New Pussycat?” Those overblown vocals resonate life experience: He grew up in a coal-mining town in Wales, where bellowing was the only way to be heard in a pub. And you could hear that he hasn’t lost a note on hits like It’s Not Unusual and Delilah. He overpowered his 11-piece band.
But ultimately, the music is romantic. During Green, Green Grass of Home, the guy next to me whipped out his cell phone and yelled into it, evidently to his wife sitting closer to the stage, “THIS IS YOUR WEDDING SONG!” And what a fine relationship that must be, if they were indeed strolling down the aisle to a ballad about some guy stuck in prison.
