Sept. 27, 1974 review: Joe Cocker in the Niagara Falls Convention Center

 


First we witnessed Eric Clapton’s notoriously drunken set in Rich Stadium in the summer of 1974, then along came this sodden performance.

Sept. 27, 1974

No Mad Dog, Cocker’s

Just an Ordinary Joe 

          Joe Cocker mutters something about his hour being up and, just as the idea sticks, he signs off with the rollicking hit that cushioned his fall from stardom to stumblebum, “High Time We Went.”

          But the lights don’t go up and the diehards among the 2,000 in the Niagara Falls Convention Center Thursday night stomp their feet and strike their matches. It works.

          Appropriately enough, he calls for “I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends,” a showstopper in his high-flying Mad Dogs & Englishmen days and still a showstopper, the one flash of bare-wire excitement in his whole set.

          For Cocker, the comeback trail is still in the lowlands. His legendary lung-busting voice flickers in and out, steadied by two Black ladies singing backup. Instead of twitching about the stage, he lumbers, making occasional old-time grabs for his hair, which is too short now to tear.

* * *

HE BRINGS out his new material as if it were charity bin furniture, exhibiting each piece more or less out of duty than love, except for Randy Newman’s “Guilty” (“It takes a whole lot of medicine, mama, for me to pretend I’m someone else”).

          Nor is the band any better. Routine funk substitutes for arrangements on everything but the old Mad Dogs stuff. You wish they’d run off a string of them, like firecrackers, instead of isolated pops: “Space Captain,” “Hitchcock Railway.” Because Cocker can do more than get by. When he tries.

          The folks who preceded Cocker, they tried. Buffalo guitarist Phil Dillon, summoned at the last minute to fill in for ailing Little Feat, worked bravely. And once the sound problems were solved, nothing could stop Focus.

* * *

MAKING THE first stop on their new American tour, the four Dutchmen debuted an artfully-conceived hour built on their latest album, “Hamburger Concerto.”

          Thiis Van Leer provided turgid organ and mind-popping yodels, Jan Akkerman embellished it with elegantly understated guitar. And they neatly tied it all up with a coda that replayed the opening theme.

          Their presence tended to get a little static, but not enough really to wish for the theatrics of their stylistic cousins – Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The Concerto’s a hamburger. Focus doesn’t need knives in their keyboards to cut it.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Boozing was the bane of Joe Cocker’s existence at this point, despite the success of his “I Can Stand a Little Rain” album, released a month before this concert, and his hit rendition of the Billy Preston song, “You Are So Beautiful.” Rolling Stone magazine reported that he threw up on stage during two shows on the West Coast in October. He didn’t sober up for a couple more years, after he signed a management deal with Woodstock producer Michael Lang, who insisted that he quit drinking.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

July 6, 1974 Review: The first Summerfest concert at Rich Stadium -- Eric Clapton and The Band

Image
  This was the summer that rock ‘n roll came to the brand new Buffalo Bills stadium in Orchard Park . There was a lot of official nervousness about this kickoff event.   July 6, 1974   Hassle-Free Clapton Concert Scores a Pleasant Success             Rich Stadium got its baptism in rock ‘n roll Saturday evening and it all went off so well that the home of the Buffalo Bills football team should be bouncing to the big beat for many summer nights to come.           It was a star-studded event – stars above and stars on the stage. The Band, honed to near perfection as a live act, cranked out a happy, raucous set. And guitar idol Eric Clapton, who announced that he was drunk (indeed, he was very drunk), took a laid-back set that left many of his worshippers perplexed.           But the real heroes of this show – the first of four in the Summerfest ’74 series at the stadium – were promoter Jerry Nathan and his Festival East organization. * * * THEY TURNED the near-impossib
Read more

Feb. 2, 1974: The Blue Ox Band

Image
  One of the major local rock bands of the day and predecessor to some equally wonderful aggregations down the line.   Feb. 2, 1974 Blue Ox Wants Aggressive, Bitey Sound   AS BLUE OX themselves will tell you, a lot depends on the crowd.                    One night they’ll be sitting there in the Bona Vista on Hertel Avenue like good old boys and girls on the bayou, bobbing in their private dreams to the Grateful Dead’s “Truckin.’”           A few nights later, at an even more tender hour, the tiny dance floor is full of folks boogieing their heads off to the very same tune. * * * “IF YOU LISTEN for a whole night,” guitarist-organist Charlie O’Neill says, “we go through all kinds of styles. But sometimes the slower stuff is rough when you’ve got a bunch that wants to bounce around.”           Variety, for Blue Ox, has been a matter of trading and balancing between a club crowd’s boogie urge and the band’s own preference for subtler, more complex tunes, including a fe
Read more

August 9, 1976 review: Elton John at Rich Stadium, with Boz Scaggs and John Miles

Image
  Now that all the organizational issues for Rich Stadium concerts were ironed out, Mother Nature decided to throw a curve. August 9, 1976 Elton John Pours It On For Rain-Soaked Fans Elton John was amazed. “I thank you for standing out in the rain and sitting out in the rain,” he remarked as he strode out in a Stars & Stripes Uncle Sam outfit in Rich Stadium Saturday afternoon for the first of three encores. “You deserve a medal of honor.” Instead of medals, the drizzle-soaked, wind-chilled crowd of 52,560 got a whale of a concert from the supermost superstar of the ‘70s. In fact, such was the energy of that first encore – everybody shouting along to the chorus of “Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting” – that the rain faltered and it seemed like the sun would awaken for a guest appearance. But it didn’t. It was miraculous enough that Superfest 10 beat the deluge. The promoters rushed to fit it all in, forestalling an epidemic of rockin’ pneumonia and the boogie-w
Read more