A set spouting Southside classics like an all shook up champagne bottle, such as I Played The Fool – maybe the greatest song The Four Tops never recorded - leave sand in your throat and someone else’s broken heart between your toes, while you marvel at the one of the most outstanding, though often overlooked, white soul voices of all time, somewhat akin to Joe Cocker had the 80s pop trough not happened.  | | Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes |
Largely comprised of old school friends, the band-as-gang routine comes easy to the eight piece Jukes, giving an onstage interplay perhaps only surpassed by the E-Street Band, and for a guy that’s pushing 60, the quickening of time doesn’t diminish Southside’s charismatic live-wire energy throughout tonight’s two hour set. Merrily re-arranging the set list at the whim of the crowd and each other, their showmanship coupled with salty Jersey shore accents could easily see them as Tony Soprano’s favourite house band. According to tradition, Springsteen’s Heart Of Stone and The Fever are played, as is the song that begat a legend, I Don’t Want To Go Home, authentic anthems one and all. The fervour and passion of this old blues-belter has, as his old buddy Bruce sang, the human touch, one that’s kept the legend growing longer than some lifetimes. |
