Here's another old review that I dug up for your reading pleasure! I've edited it a bit here and there, but it's mostly the same as when I first wrote it.
Peter Tork and Shoe Suede Blues at the Turning Point Caf in Piermont, NY
December 3, 2005, 8:00 PM
Peter arrived late. We were a little worried that he wasnt gonna show! Then finally, at about 7:45 or so, a band started coming in and setting up. I didnt recognize any of the band members, so we and the people sitting near us (who had seen Peter at this venue before when he had been all set up by the time they got there) thought that maybe they were the 10:30 band, especially when one of them got up on stage and said, Looks like were on at 8:00, or something like that. It turned out that it really was Peters band, but maybe they had thought they were supposed to go on at 9:00 or something. We never found out, but they quickly set up and began to play by 8:15 or so, I guess.
Setlist:
1) Treat Her Right
2) Hitchhike
3) Cross Cut Saw
4) Last Train To Clarksville (slow blues version)
5) The next song featured Richard Michaels (Mikuls?), the lead guitarist, on lead vocals, but I didnt catch a recurring line to help me figure out the title of the song.
6) Saved By The Blues
7) Boogie Woogie Barbecue (Wine?)
Peter did a very cute wiggle during this song!
8) Im A Believer
9) I Used To Love Her (Richard Michaels singing lead again)
10) Thats What Happens When The Getting Gets Good (Annie Had A Baby)
The drummer, John Palmer, did a great harmonica segment during this song!
11) Daydream Believer (Peter played keyboard for this. Peter said your turn and had the audience sing alone for the last or maybe next-to-last chorus! He commented, Youre on key and everything!")
-- Ask Moses patter [Im trying to edit this months later, and I dont remember the details exactly, but I think that Peter thought that Arnold Jacks did a great impression of Edward G. Robinson in The Ten Commandments movie and asked him to say that line: Ask Moses, in his Edward G. Robinson voice, because he thought it was so funny! Arnold complied, only a bit hesitantly, if I am recalling correctly!]
12) I Got My Mojo Working
13) A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You (My husband figured out what song they were going to do from the hand gestures Peter was making to his band!) Peter played keyboard.
14) Hey Cab Driver (Peter introduced this song as being composed by Richard Michaels, but I wasnt sure if he was joking or not, because of the way he said it and the joking that went on between him and Richard and the other band members afterwards. Its on the Saved by the Blues CD that I bought, and the composers are listed as Galleran/Milkus, so Im not sure if it was just a joke or if Michael is a stage name version of Milkus just like Thorkelson/Tork.) [Nov.2006 edit: Richard's last name is spelled "Michaels" on the CD insert, but I've also seen it spelled "Mikuls," and it looks like he signed it that way in his autograph. I suspect now that "Milkus" may have been a typo & that it should have said "Mikuls."]
15) Dress Sexy For Me (There were a few women in the audience who seemed to be very familiar with all the material as if theyd seen Peter in concert many times, and two of them got up and did a dance to this in an area where Peter could see them but where they were far enough from the tables and the rest of the audience to have room to move. One of them, who looked quite young, seemed to have totally taken the words of the song to heart!)
16) Even White Boys Get The Blues (Peter did a great intro to this song, which is about a millionaire who gets busted for drunk driving sort of. He explains that since the guy refused to take a breathalizer test, all they could do was suspend his drivers license for 6 months, but since he could afford to take limos to work everyday, he didnt care. Peter said that a former band member was inspired to write this song by a piece he saw on the news the other night well, about 15 years back, actually. He started wondering what it would be like to have that much money and whether or not there was a down side to it. This song is not on the CD, and I only heard the lyrics once, but it was quite humorous.
17) Your Auntie Grizelda (complete with the parrot squalks and didnt you used to wear a hat? Did your mother invent Liquid Paper? bits during the ad lib portion of the song which was sung as gibberish on the original Monkees recording. I think hes been doing it this way at least since the Monkees reunion tours of the 1980s.)
18) Young Blood (Peter led into this with a story about the Pizza Hut commercial he and Davy and Micky had done with Ringo Starr at one time. Apparently, while they were standing around waiting for filming to begin, Ringo said something droll, and Peter said to him, youre the musician here. Were supposed to be the humorists! or something to that effect, and Ringo responded that hes been known to make people laugh in his day! I may be messing up the story, but it was something like that anyway.
19) (Im Not Your) Steppin Stone (Peter talked about the Sex Pistols version of this song that was very aggressive, compared to the 99 Strings version which was very genteel, and this reminded him of a story about Margaret Thatcher, which he said he has to tell every night because his bass player, Arnold Jacks, loves it so much! The story is that Margaret Thatcher was a shopkeepers daughter and had to take elocution lessons to learn to speak posh, but she learned her lessons so well that people said if she sounded any more British you wouldnt be able to hear her! Peter did his best Margaret Thatcher genteel impression as he told this!) He said that Shoe Suede Blues plays it very raw to go with the psychological theory (which he says is probably false) that if you get out your aggression through musical performance youre less likely to behave aggressively in real life.
After Steppin Stone, Peter tried to say goodnight, but was of course cheered on for an encore. They did:
20) Lucille (Peter on guitar.)
After the show Peter said he would be signing autographs in the back, where they were also selling CDs. I had bought my CD during Your Auntie Grizelda, or right afterwards, so I first asked the bandmembers who were still on the stage to sign it, while there was still something of a line for Peter. They said a regular pen wasnt good for that and I should ask the woman selling the CDs for a Sharpie marker. Of course, she was right where Peter was, so I ended up talking to him first after all, and then going back later to get the other guys autographs with the other markers I got from their helper! I told him that the concert was fabulous (which it was!), and I told him that my friend and I had figured out that wed both seen him at least once a decade ever since CBGBs in New York City in 1977! He said something like, Oh, you were there! You know, I listened to a CD of that concert, and I sounded so off-key!and I think he sort of covered his face in his hands a bit, as if in shame. I just smiled like a goofball, because I didnt know how to respond to that! (I actually have a tape of that performance that I made that night, and I have listened to it recently. There were spots when he was quite off-key its true, but there were also many moments when he sounded great, and even when he was off-key he was so lovable, and the concert experience of seeing him perform live was so magical for me that it didnt matter! His ability to stay on key has most certainly improved significantly with age, though! I have always loved his voice, but I think he sounds even better than ever now -- with no pitch problems at all!) I gave him the insert of the Saved By The Blues CD to sign, and he asked me who to make it out to and signed it to me by name and then wrote, love, Peter Tork under that! The insert folds open to a section of credits about the album production which includes pictures of the four bandmembers who were in the band when it was recorded. I had presented it to him unfolded to that display, and he signed just above his picture, as Id hoped he would. (I later went back to the stage with the Sharpies I borrowed and asked Richard Michaels and John Palmer to sign near their pictures, which they did. Afterwards I found Arnold Jacks, the new bass player who is not featured or pictured on the CD, and asked him to sign the front of the CD anyway. He did, signing it AJ.) Peter let me pose for a picture with him, and my friend took two pictures just in case one with my little disposable camera and one with her digital camera.
When I got through with getting the other bandmembers autographs I noticed that my husband was over talking to Peter! I came up beside him so I could hear what he was saying. He told Peter that he didnt need an autograph (and I put in that I already got one, and he was my husband), but just wanted to tell Peter that he thought he was great and thought he sounded even better now than he did 40 years ago! Peter thanked him, and said he thought so too! I also said something about him sounding better than ever. My husband, (who used to play in some local bands when he was younger) also talked a little bit about Peters methods of playing. He thought he used a banjo pick, but Peter explained that what he used were special finger picks for guitar. (Later my husband expressed to me that he thought maybe Peter was annoyed at him for saying that, but it didnt seem that way to me. It just seemed like he was correcting him.) My friend came up to take a picture of my husband and Peter while they were talking. She just meant to get a candid shot, but Peter stood up to pose next to my husband as they continued to talk. My husband also told Peter that he thinks what hes doing is great and is exactly what he should be doing and that he seems to be very happy doing it. Peter says that he loves having the opportunity to play, and even though its only twice a week right now, hes hoping. He sort of left an open-ended pause here, for us to figure out what hes hoping for, I guess. My husband commented that its sometimes harder to play in a small place like this than it is in a great big place, but Peter didnt agree. He said something like, No, not at all. Whatever you lose in terms of the energy of a large crowd is totally made up for by the intimacy! I interjected something here about how great it was for us! I thought this conversation was going very well and was very proud of my husband for being so cool about it. At some point my husband shook Peters hand (I dont remember if it was at the beginning or the end of the conversation), and since, believe it or not, I didnt remember whether or not I had done so when Id talked to him before, I made a point of shaking Peters hand then, too! Before I left, I tried to quickly tell him about the message board, but I seemed to have lost his interest by then. I just hope I didn't totally make a fool of myself with that! I was a little disappointed that he didn't recognize my friend from the time he had sat and talked with her in an ice cream store in New Jersey a few years ago, (and she's not the type to remind him of it), but these are minor worries/disappointments out of an over-all wonderful evening!
Here's a link to my pictures from this concert.
Edit: Just corrected the date. For some reason I remembered it as Dec. 5th, but I guess it was really the 3rd -- a Saturday night.
Peter Tork and Shoe Suede Blues at the Turning Point Caf in Piermont, NY
December 3, 2005, 8:00 PM
Peter arrived late. We were a little worried that he wasnt gonna show! Then finally, at about 7:45 or so, a band started coming in and setting up. I didnt recognize any of the band members, so we and the people sitting near us (who had seen Peter at this venue before when he had been all set up by the time they got there) thought that maybe they were the 10:30 band, especially when one of them got up on stage and said, Looks like were on at 8:00, or something like that. It turned out that it really was Peters band, but maybe they had thought they were supposed to go on at 9:00 or something. We never found out, but they quickly set up and began to play by 8:15 or so, I guess.
Setlist:
1) Treat Her Right
2) Hitchhike
3) Cross Cut Saw
4) Last Train To Clarksville (slow blues version)
5) The next song featured Richard Michaels (Mikuls?), the lead guitarist, on lead vocals, but I didnt catch a recurring line to help me figure out the title of the song.
6) Saved By The Blues
7) Boogie Woogie Barbecue (Wine?)
Peter did a very cute wiggle during this song!
8) Im A Believer
9) I Used To Love Her (Richard Michaels singing lead again)
10) Thats What Happens When The Getting Gets Good (Annie Had A Baby)
The drummer, John Palmer, did a great harmonica segment during this song!
11) Daydream Believer (Peter played keyboard for this. Peter said your turn and had the audience sing alone for the last or maybe next-to-last chorus! He commented, Youre on key and everything!")
-- Ask Moses patter [Im trying to edit this months later, and I dont remember the details exactly, but I think that Peter thought that Arnold Jacks did a great impression of Edward G. Robinson in The Ten Commandments movie and asked him to say that line: Ask Moses, in his Edward G. Robinson voice, because he thought it was so funny! Arnold complied, only a bit hesitantly, if I am recalling correctly!]
12) I Got My Mojo Working
13) A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You (My husband figured out what song they were going to do from the hand gestures Peter was making to his band!) Peter played keyboard.
14) Hey Cab Driver (Peter introduced this song as being composed by Richard Michaels, but I wasnt sure if he was joking or not, because of the way he said it and the joking that went on between him and Richard and the other band members afterwards. Its on the Saved by the Blues CD that I bought, and the composers are listed as Galleran/Milkus, so Im not sure if it was just a joke or if Michael is a stage name version of Milkus just like Thorkelson/Tork.) [Nov.2006 edit: Richard's last name is spelled "Michaels" on the CD insert, but I've also seen it spelled "Mikuls," and it looks like he signed it that way in his autograph. I suspect now that "Milkus" may have been a typo & that it should have said "Mikuls."]
15) Dress Sexy For Me (There were a few women in the audience who seemed to be very familiar with all the material as if theyd seen Peter in concert many times, and two of them got up and did a dance to this in an area where Peter could see them but where they were far enough from the tables and the rest of the audience to have room to move. One of them, who looked quite young, seemed to have totally taken the words of the song to heart!)
16) Even White Boys Get The Blues (Peter did a great intro to this song, which is about a millionaire who gets busted for drunk driving sort of. He explains that since the guy refused to take a breathalizer test, all they could do was suspend his drivers license for 6 months, but since he could afford to take limos to work everyday, he didnt care. Peter said that a former band member was inspired to write this song by a piece he saw on the news the other night well, about 15 years back, actually. He started wondering what it would be like to have that much money and whether or not there was a down side to it. This song is not on the CD, and I only heard the lyrics once, but it was quite humorous.
17) Your Auntie Grizelda (complete with the parrot squalks and didnt you used to wear a hat? Did your mother invent Liquid Paper? bits during the ad lib portion of the song which was sung as gibberish on the original Monkees recording. I think hes been doing it this way at least since the Monkees reunion tours of the 1980s.)
18) Young Blood (Peter led into this with a story about the Pizza Hut commercial he and Davy and Micky had done with Ringo Starr at one time. Apparently, while they were standing around waiting for filming to begin, Ringo said something droll, and Peter said to him, youre the musician here. Were supposed to be the humorists! or something to that effect, and Ringo responded that hes been known to make people laugh in his day! I may be messing up the story, but it was something like that anyway.
19) (Im Not Your) Steppin Stone (Peter talked about the Sex Pistols version of this song that was very aggressive, compared to the 99 Strings version which was very genteel, and this reminded him of a story about Margaret Thatcher, which he said he has to tell every night because his bass player, Arnold Jacks, loves it so much! The story is that Margaret Thatcher was a shopkeepers daughter and had to take elocution lessons to learn to speak posh, but she learned her lessons so well that people said if she sounded any more British you wouldnt be able to hear her! Peter did his best Margaret Thatcher genteel impression as he told this!) He said that Shoe Suede Blues plays it very raw to go with the psychological theory (which he says is probably false) that if you get out your aggression through musical performance youre less likely to behave aggressively in real life.
After Steppin Stone, Peter tried to say goodnight, but was of course cheered on for an encore. They did:
20) Lucille (Peter on guitar.)
After the show Peter said he would be signing autographs in the back, where they were also selling CDs. I had bought my CD during Your Auntie Grizelda, or right afterwards, so I first asked the bandmembers who were still on the stage to sign it, while there was still something of a line for Peter. They said a regular pen wasnt good for that and I should ask the woman selling the CDs for a Sharpie marker. Of course, she was right where Peter was, so I ended up talking to him first after all, and then going back later to get the other guys autographs with the other markers I got from their helper! I told him that the concert was fabulous (which it was!), and I told him that my friend and I had figured out that wed both seen him at least once a decade ever since CBGBs in New York City in 1977! He said something like, Oh, you were there! You know, I listened to a CD of that concert, and I sounded so off-key!and I think he sort of covered his face in his hands a bit, as if in shame. I just smiled like a goofball, because I didnt know how to respond to that! (I actually have a tape of that performance that I made that night, and I have listened to it recently. There were spots when he was quite off-key its true, but there were also many moments when he sounded great, and even when he was off-key he was so lovable, and the concert experience of seeing him perform live was so magical for me that it didnt matter! His ability to stay on key has most certainly improved significantly with age, though! I have always loved his voice, but I think he sounds even better than ever now -- with no pitch problems at all!) I gave him the insert of the Saved By The Blues CD to sign, and he asked me who to make it out to and signed it to me by name and then wrote, love, Peter Tork under that! The insert folds open to a section of credits about the album production which includes pictures of the four bandmembers who were in the band when it was recorded. I had presented it to him unfolded to that display, and he signed just above his picture, as Id hoped he would. (I later went back to the stage with the Sharpies I borrowed and asked Richard Michaels and John Palmer to sign near their pictures, which they did. Afterwards I found Arnold Jacks, the new bass player who is not featured or pictured on the CD, and asked him to sign the front of the CD anyway. He did, signing it AJ.) Peter let me pose for a picture with him, and my friend took two pictures just in case one with my little disposable camera and one with her digital camera.
When I got through with getting the other bandmembers autographs I noticed that my husband was over talking to Peter! I came up beside him so I could hear what he was saying. He told Peter that he didnt need an autograph (and I put in that I already got one, and he was my husband), but just wanted to tell Peter that he thought he was great and thought he sounded even better now than he did 40 years ago! Peter thanked him, and said he thought so too! I also said something about him sounding better than ever. My husband, (who used to play in some local bands when he was younger) also talked a little bit about Peters methods of playing. He thought he used a banjo pick, but Peter explained that what he used were special finger picks for guitar. (Later my husband expressed to me that he thought maybe Peter was annoyed at him for saying that, but it didnt seem that way to me. It just seemed like he was correcting him.) My friend came up to take a picture of my husband and Peter while they were talking. She just meant to get a candid shot, but Peter stood up to pose next to my husband as they continued to talk. My husband also told Peter that he thinks what hes doing is great and is exactly what he should be doing and that he seems to be very happy doing it. Peter says that he loves having the opportunity to play, and even though its only twice a week right now, hes hoping. He sort of left an open-ended pause here, for us to figure out what hes hoping for, I guess. My husband commented that its sometimes harder to play in a small place like this than it is in a great big place, but Peter didnt agree. He said something like, No, not at all. Whatever you lose in terms of the energy of a large crowd is totally made up for by the intimacy! I interjected something here about how great it was for us! I thought this conversation was going very well and was very proud of my husband for being so cool about it. At some point my husband shook Peters hand (I dont remember if it was at the beginning or the end of the conversation), and since, believe it or not, I didnt remember whether or not I had done so when Id talked to him before, I made a point of shaking Peters hand then, too! Before I left, I tried to quickly tell him about the message board, but I seemed to have lost his interest by then. I just hope I didn't totally make a fool of myself with that! I was a little disappointed that he didn't recognize my friend from the time he had sat and talked with her in an ice cream store in New Jersey a few years ago, (and she's not the type to remind him of it), but these are minor worries/disappointments out of an over-all wonderful evening!
Here's a link to my pictures from this concert.
Edit: Just corrected the date. For some reason I remembered it as Dec. 5th, but I guess it was really the 3rd -- a Saturday night.




(so much for dignity! <g>) And, at least most of the time, Peter and the guys seem to enjoy it as well!
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