fond musical - background music
Mark Lepage
GAZETTE Rock Critique
1994
They had come, the genuinely devoted fiftysomethings and the post-modern kids, to join the Tom Tom Club. They got both versions of the man last night.
There was Tom Jones the mighty vocalist, whose the immense take on (It Look Like) I'll Never Fall Again in the second half of the set rightly brought the house down. And there was the other Tom, who camped it up for a steady trickle of flowers, hankies and the odd suspiciously panty-like number. This must have been the Tom who hired the band.
Once past the remarkable yet quite explainable fact of his comeback, Jones is a study in the triumphe of gift over taste. In Jones, a goldon voice and the sheer resilience of a born perfomer stake out a terrain somewhere between corn and hipness. Burt Bacharach, meet Prince, James Bond meet Hendrix.
Jones's voice was, as promised, in "good nick". After skating through two numbers, the 53-year-old signer hammered Help Yourself to an accurately twee arrangement, bellowed "Thank you very much!" and was into Delilah.
He could still power a space shuttle, and still drive a young woman in leather pants to seize her opportunity and make a high-heeled dash for it. A gracious Jones allowed the stage crasher a hug. And this is the man's peculiar dilemma. Yes, the hankies were proferred by fans and yes, Jones mopped his face and doused them in the precious perspiration. For all his credibility as vocalist-and he really does have few peers in terms of power-he is still somewhere between the casino and clubland.
Nailed every note, dodged none
What's a legend to do? Fans were one rejected hankie, one spurned sweatscapade away from a ruptured fantasy, and Jones would never allow that to happen. In the Tom Tom Club, the signer and the legacy take up too much of one another's dance floor.
Most of it was the band's fault, or more accurately,the arrangements. Some of that problem stemmed from a gaudy set list, that veered from Sam and Dave (an enormous I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down) to the animals to Stevie Wonder to Thunderball.
The variety was fine for Jones, who nailed every note and dodged none. It limited the 11-piece band to journeymen status, capably and blanbly moving from percolating conga rythms to R&B tinged with shmaltz.
And somewhere was the knowledge that it could and should have been more. Jones deserved not to be judged with good-for-his-age condescension: his talent has not been diminished. Take away one Tom, put him in a club with a ferocious band and the notion of Jones the Voice triumphing would not be unusual at all.
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