April 21, 1977 review: Al Stewart at the Century Theater

 


A banner week for folk-rock. First Janis Ian. Then this marvelous guy. “Year of the Cat” is still one of my favorite songs.

 

April 21, 1977

Gentle-Voiced Stewart

Rides ‘Cat’ Into Town 

          If Al Stewart’s tour T-shirt is a winner, can he be anything less?

          It’s a fine T-shirt – black with the stylized cat-face on the front (same cat-face as on his stage backdrop at the Century Theater Wednesday night). On the back, the legend: “Al Stewart, Tour of the Cat.”

          The shirt celebrates the lanky, 31-year-old British songwriter’s first hit, “Year of the Cat,” a wistful tale of a tourist who meets a mysterious woman in North Africa.

          It’s the first across-the-board acclaim of his 10-year recording career. It’s caused him to extend his concert schedule and nearly filled the Century for him.

          A sweet, gentle-voiced singer, he might continue to give his tunes the soft focus they have on his albums if it weren’t for the upbeat vigor of his quintet, which includes a pair of keyboardmen.

          He draws primarily from his three most recent albums – going back to the Kurt Vonnegut-inspired “Sirens of Titan,” playing about half the “Cat” album, finishing with a glorious, extended version of the title cut.

          “If It Doesn’t Come Naturally, Leave It” is his first encore. Despite the rising of the house lights, the demand for a second encore comes naturally and enthusiastically, so he takes it.

          Opening was Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Wendy Waldman, a fetching figure in a long white dress and long frizzy hair. Her first album, containing two tunes picked up by Maria Muldaur, got a big send-off and she’s been coasting ever since.

          Unhappily, she hasn’t reached the upswing yet. Her seven-member band lacked precision, the sound system distorted her high notes and she chose clichéd material which might better be sung to the waves crashing on Malibu.

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Al Stewart in 1977. Year of the Cat tour T-shirt.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Remarkable guy, Al Stewart. A key figure in the British folk revival in the years before he got to Buffalo, he even created his own genre, historical folk rock. He already had released seven albums, taken guitar lessons from Robert Fripp, shared a flat in London with Paul Simon, played guitar on Buffalo singer-songwriter Jackson C. Frank’s debut album and knew Yoko Ono before John Lennon did.

Since then he’s put out nine more studio albums and three live collections. And he’s still touring. In fact, he’s winding up a swing through England this week. He stopped into the Riviera Theatre in North Tonawanda with his band Empty Pockets in June 2021.

          Setlist.fm has an incomplete record of songs played at the Century Theater date, but it was probably pretty close to what he did five nights earlier at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston:

          Apple Cider Re-Constitution

          One Stage Before

          Midas Shadow

          Soho (Needless to Say)

          Broadway Hotel

          Roads to Moscow

          Nostradamus

          On the Border

          Sirens of Titan

          Year of the Cat

          If It Doesn’t Come Naturally, Leave It

          Carol

           From Buffalo, Al Stewart went to Albany, where the song list on setlist.fm, though incomplete, includes “Flying Sorcery” and “Modern Times.”

One of his keyboardists was Peter Wood, co-writer of “Year of the Cat.” YouTube shows Wood performing it with Stewart in the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, N.J., on April 30, 1977, beginning with a lengthy, tinkly stretch of “As Time Goes By” before the song kicks in, an exquisite mood-setting choice since the first verse references the film “Casablanca.” Equally excellent in the video is saxophonist Phil Kenzie, a Liverpool guy who played on the Beatles album “Let It Be.”

          Wendy Waldman, who clearly had a bad night, is the daughter of the composer who wrote the theme music for “Perry Mason” and “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” Coming up through the Los Angeles singer-songwriter circuit, she banded with some other notable singer-songwriters in a group called Bryndle, which included Karla Bonoff, Andrew Gold and Kenny Edwards, who had been in the Stone Poneys with Linda Ronstadt. She moved to Nashville in 1982 and has co-written hits for Vanessa Williams, Madonna and Celine Dion.



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