Pittsburgh welcomes back old buddy Bob Seger
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There isn't a nicer guy in the music business than Bob Seger, so when he walks out on stage with a big smile, like he did Saturday night at Consol Energy Center, it's like your old buddy came to town.
"We used to play here in the '60s," he said, a few songs in. "We used to play Lebanon Lodge. No one remembers that..." He mentioned playing three sets, well into the night, then driving back to Detroit. "Try that," he said.
Amazingly, almost 50 years later, the leader of the Silver Bullet Band can still rock the house. His hair and beard are silver now, but his husky pipes pack the same ol' punch, maybe from those years of downtime in the '90s.
Saturday's night show was his first visit here in five years, and this time, with no new studio album in sight, his set list focused on some "Ultimate Hits," the title of his new collection, with a few rarer gems and added surprises.
In this age of big production, they were delivered unadorned. There isn't the slightest bit of rock star attitude in the guy, and to go along with it, no rock star trappings: No video screens, no lasers, no pyro. Just a simple lighting rig, a red curtain in the back and a big clean sound.
He puts the money into the band. The Silver Bullet numbered seven core players, three backup singers and a four-piece horn section. It's one of America's great heartland bands, rooted in his love of old time rock 'n' roll and R&B.
They dug into those roots with Little Richard's "Hey Hey Hey Hey (Going Back to Birmingham)," source material for swaggering Seger rockers like "Sunspot Baby" and "Katmandu," not to mention "Old Time Rock and Roll," during which Consol turned into a wedding reception for 17,000 (a guess) -- with no cake and a cash bar.
As it was pointed out to me on Twitter, Tom Cruise was right in Downtown Saturday (seen at the PPG Ice Rink), so the chance was there for him to come out and boogie in his briefs, but... no dice. (Mr. Seger had pointed out in a pre-show interview that the two stars had never met.)
First Published November 20, 2011 12:33 am
