Winnipeg review
 

http://www.winnipegsun.com/entertain...7/9140031.html

Gordon Lightfoot

Where: MTS Centre

When: Thu., April 16

Sun Rating 3.5 out of 5

Business up front, party in the back.

If there's a way to sum up Gordon Lightfoot's concert at MTS Centre Thursday night, that's it. And no, we're not talking about his hair — though his swept-back, shoulder-length locks were slightly mulletish, come to think of it.

Mostly, though, we're talking about the way the 70-year-old folk icon divided up his 110-minute show into two distinctly different halves: One perfunctory, fast-paced and no-nonsense; the other loose, relaxed and far more enjoyable. Instead of An Evening With Gordon Lightfoot, they should have called it The Two Sides of Gordon Lightfoot.

Let's start with Side 1: The K-Tel Concert. Taking the stage at a few minutes after 8 p.m., Lightfoot — clad in a purplish velvety jacket, skinny-legged black jeans and pointy-toed footwear — proceeded to hustle his four-piece band through a jukebox-like 14 songs in 50 minutes. And we do mean hustle; from Cotton Jenny and Carefree Highway to Rainy Day People and Beautiful to Sundown and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the hits fell like dominos. (At times, it almost reminded us of that old SCTV commercial parody for an album titled Gordon Lightfoot Sings Every Song Ever Written — we were half-expecting him to launch into Supercalifragalisticexpialidotious and Happy Birthday.)

Hit-packed it may have been; riveting it was not. Most of the tunes were pared down to the essentials; some were truncated; sometimes Lightfoot barely seemed to pause for breath between numbers. His tastefully understated but ultimately generic combo — consisting of a guitarist, keyboard player and a rhythm section — handled everything capably, whether it was country-pop, folk-rock or more "ethereal" fare. But hamstrung as they were, they seemed more like a Holiday Inn cover band than a touring arena act. The well-behaved, attentive and decidedly middle-aged crowd of 3,000 didn't seem to mind much — but they didn't seem especially bowled over by it either. Aside from a few nostalgic whoops during the druggy Sundown and a massive outpouring for Edmund Fitzgerald, applause was enthusiastic but polite and most folks were restrained (except for the lug behind me, who apparently believed he was at some sort of sit-down clog-dancing event).

At first, we thought maybe LIghtfoot just wasn't enjoying himself. But once he proclaimed "Awright!" after the first big round of applause, that went out the window. Which brought us to another possible explanation: That he just doesn't have the stamina to make it through a long concert anymore. After all, these days, Lightfoot — who never seems to have fully recovered from an abdominal aneurysm that put him in a coma for six weeks back in 2002 — is as gaunt as a Rolling Stone, with cheekbones you could use to slice cheese. And likely as a result of a tracheotomy performed during that health scare, his voice has withered away to a thin, dusty shadow of its former robust, boomy self. So if he was trying to bolt through as many songs as he could before running out of steam, well, fair enough.

But no. As Lightfoot joked near the end of the first set, he isn't nearly as frail as he appears. "I'm holding up pretty well," he quipped, eliciting cheers. "I go to the gym a lot in my spare time."

So what was with the Speedy Gonzalez bit? Well, he claimed he was intentionally front-loading the set list with hits so that he could take it a little easier and let his hair down in the second half. We're not sure why he felt he had to do that, but hey, it was his show. And after a brief 15-minute break, he made good on his promise.

Shedding his jacket for a vest, Lightfoot did indeed stretch out a little in the 50-minute-long second half. He led the band through rockier numbers like Hangdog Hotel Room, Make Way for the Lady, Baby Step Back and Blackberry Wine. He chatted with the audience about a cold he's trying to shake. He joked about his ex-wives ("I was never unfaithful in my second marriage"). He took requests. He showed the audience how to drink water upside-down to cure the hiccups. He even moved away from the microphone every now and then (making the spotlight operator work for the first time that evening). Basically, he relaxed and had more fun — and so did everybody else, judging by the increasingly vigourous applause. And even though he played almost as many numbers in this half as in the first, nothing seemed rushed or abbreviated. In fact, by the time he was singing "I'd best be on my way" in Early Morning Rain, he seemed like he was just hitting his stride.

Next time, Lightfoot should skip the business and go straight to the party.

darryl.sterdan@sunmedia.ca

First Set:

Cotton Jenny

Carefree Highway

Sea of Tranquility

14 Karat Gold

Never Too Close

Let it Ride

Painter Passing Through

Rainy Day People

Shadows

Beautiful

Watchman's Gone

Ribbon of Darkness

Sundown

The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald

Second Set:

Triangle

Hangdog Hotel Room

Restless

Clouds of Loneliness

Waiting for You

If Children Had Wings

Make Way for the Lady

If You Could Read My Mind

Don Quixote

Baby Step Back

Early Morning Rain

Song For a Winter's Night

Blackberry Wine

Encore:

Old Dan's Records

Re: Winnipeg review
 

Ya know, sometimes it's best I think for me not to read some of these write ups as it seems to set me off on a tangent in another direction which is totally opposite to the one my mindset was previously residing.

Without getting to the "mulletish" hair comment and the rest of dribble that is in this article, I'd like to quote a comment by a guy who who knows how to make quotes.

His name is Brendan Behan and he's made some cool ones:

Here's what he said about "CRITICS:"

CRITICS are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.

Re: Winnipeg review
 

Great quote!

It never fails to astonish me how critics feel they can attack someone based on nothing except their own prejudice and lack of understanding! Small things amuse small minds, and when the whole purpose of a review is to make snide remarks, I sometimes wonder how these guys get their jobs -- it doesn't seem to be based on qualifications!

I've often wondered if editors limit critics to one or two favorable reviews a year...since they never seem to think that an audience that goes away satisfied means anything...

Re: Winnipeg review
 

I thought this one was, at times, humorous, then irksome... then mostly irksome.
So, let's see what the Dictionary might have to say about critics... I'm goin' with number 3!

critic

critic (krît´îk) noun
1.One who forms and expresses judgments of the merits, faults, value, or truth of a matter.
2.Abbr. crit. One who specializes especially professionally in the evaluation and appreciation of literary or artistic works: a film critic; a dance critic.
3.One who tends to make harsh or carping judgments; a faultfinder.

[Latin criticus, from Greek kritikos, able to discern, from kritês, judge, from krinein, to separate, judge.]