Tag: Lionel Richie

Generally, there’s no such thing as a bad concert, and 2019 was no exception. While my criteria for what’s constitutes a good concert experience changes a bit from show to show — the location of my seat, the ticket price, whether I got to go to the meet-and-greet, the quality of the photos I get — I can usually find a lot of things I like about a show.

I couldn’t limit the list to the Top 10 shows of 2019, so I made it Top 11 this year. Really, all the concerts were very good, it’s just that these were just a little bit better.

11. Steely Dan — The Met/Philly (Nov. 9) — There was a lot right and a few things wrong for me at this show. First and foremost, the music was brilliant, Donald Fagen can still deliver the goods, and his band is nothing short of outstanding. And while the historic venue is something to behold and a nice place to see a concert, the fact that there is little parking nearby and the overly aggressive ushers on prohibiting photos really took away from this show and explains the reason for the rank. But boy, what a catalog of great songs performed with master musicianship.

Original members of Three Dog Night, Michael Allsup and Danny Hutton.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

10. Three Dog Night — American Music Theatre/Lancaster, PA — (Sept. 22) — There are only two original members left — vocalist Danny Hutton and guitarist Michael Allsup — but they still sound like classic TDN. The band’s library of hits includes some of my favorite songs from the 1970s. And the American Music Theater is a great place to see a show. The seats are wide and comfortable and the leg room between rows is plentiful. Plus I went down to the stage, something I’ve just started doing in the past year if the opportunity presents itself, for the encore, “Joy to the World.”

9. Gary Clark Jr. — Ryman Auditorium/Nashville, TN (March 7) — I was unfamiliar with Clark’s music and my pal Jared Bilski invited me to this show when we were in Nashville for a work conference. Once the show started, I became an immediate fan of Clark’s music. Of course, being in the historic Ryman was a treat, despite the hard church pew bench seating in the balcony. The no-photo policy always annoys me, and this was no exception in that regard. Clark is a tremendous guitarist and can sing. I’d go see him again. I loved Nashville and I’d like to sit downstairs at the Ryman the next time.

8. Dan May — Sellersville Theater/Sellersville, PA — (July 5) — Dan’s shows are always wonderfully entertaining and his songwriting is brilliant. The venue is where we first discovered Dan’s music when he opened for Crystal Gayle, so we always try to see him there. In recent years, Dan has added storytelling segments to his shows, reading chapters from his books, and I really enjoy that. There isn’t a better night of music and entertainment than the Philadelphia-based local musician and his band.

Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley of America.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

7. America — Penn’s Peak/Jim Thorpe, PA — (Aug. 17) — Given my well-chronicled affinity for what is one of my favorite bands of all-time, you might be surprised at this ranking. I see this show every time I can and will continue to do so for as long as I’m able. Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley still sound great, they do all the hits and the venue offers some great seat options, great prices and a spectacular view of the Poconos.

J.D Malone and Tommy Geddes.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

6. J.D Malone and the Experts — Steel City Coffeehouse/Phoenixville, PA — (March 16) — Intimate venue, high-energy show where the artists come out and greet the fans personally before the show. Another full night of entertaining music for the ticket price by another Philadelphia-area artist. J.D’s songwriting is undeniably wonderful and he always looks like he’s enjoying himself up there on stage. That’s contagious for the audience and it returns the love.

Left to right, Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass, Peter Beckett of Player and John Ford Coley.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

5. Rock the Yacht, featuring Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass, Peter Beckett of Player, Ambrosia, John Ford Coley and Walter Egan/The Borgata, Atlantic City, NJ — (Aug. 23) — A very yacht rocky lineup of many of my favorite artists of the 1970s. They all still sound great and we had great seats at a reasonable price. In addition to the show, a highlight of the evening was before the show, where we had the opportunity to meet and have dinner with Elliot Lurie, who wrote “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl),” one of the most iconic songs of the 1970s. A personable and friendly gent, I had interviewed Elliot for “The Vinyl Dialogues Volume IV: From Studio to Stylus” after connecting with him on Facebook. It was a thrill for me to meet the guy who wrote one of the songs to the soundtrack of my life. After that, the concert was gravy.

Micky Dolenz and Mike Nesmith of The Monkees.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

4. The Monkees — Keswick Theatre, Glenside, PA — (March 6) — There’s only two of them left — Micky Dolenz and Mike Nesmith — but they still sounded like The Monkees. This was a rescheduled show from 2018 when Nesmsith fell ill on the stage of the Keswick during sound check and eventually needed heart surgery. But the duo put on a great show and gave us a little slice of our childhood back for one evening.

Daryl Hall and John Oates.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

3. Daryl Hall and John Oates — Allentown Fairgrounds, Allentown, PA — (Sept. 1) — This show could have been ranked lower because I’ve seen them so many times, but it’s not because Hall & Oates are just that damn good. An outdoor show on wooden chairs at a fairgrounds can present some challenges, but the weather held. Allentown is close enough to home turf for Daryl and John, and they always seem to be comfortable on their home field. We’ve seen this show many times, and it’s always ridiculously solid. The band is tight, tight, tight. The catalog of hits is undeniable. There have been times when I’ve hoped for some deeper cuts in the setlist, but John has told me in more than one interview that they feel obligated to the fans to play the hits. These guys are as good now as they ever were and we’re lucky that they’re still out there sharing their music with us.

2. Lionel Richie, Hard Rock Cafe, Atlantic City, NJ — (March 23) — This high ranking shows just how good a showman, entertainer and singer Lionel Richie is because I absolutely dislike this venue. The room is just full of bad angles, many of the seats are too far from the stage and it has a no-photos policy, which will always rub me the wrong way. But Richie can sing, he’s so personable on stage, and there’s no denying the great catalog of music. This is one where I wish I would have been sitting closer but the ticket prices were prohibitive for those seats. I’d go see him again in a heartbeat.

Little Steven Van Zandt and the Disciples of Soul.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

1. Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul — Keswick Theatre, Glenside, PA — (July 20) — All the stars lined up perfectly for this show, which is why is takes the top spot. I went by myself, which isn’t my preference, but I got a ticket for $79.50 right in the front row. The Disciples of Soul rocked the house, Little Steven was all Little Steven and more, I love his music and I was in the catbird seat for photos, which Stevie himself encourages people to take. There’s always that slight chance that Bruce Springsteen is going to show up unannounced at an East Coast Steveie show, but that didn’t happen at this one. At one point Stevie stuck the mic in my face so I could sing a little — not a really good idea — but I wasn’t familiar enough with the lyrics of the song, so I shit down my leg and had to mush-mouthed it. He looked at me like, WTF man. But it was a tremendous amount of fun and I got some outstanding photos. If the opportunity presents itself, always sit in the front row when you can.

It’s easy to listen to Lionel Richie sing ‘Brick House’ and other hits all night long

By Mike Morsch

On March 24, 2019

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

Lionel Richie sings the Commodores hit “Brick House” Saturday, March 23, 2019, at the Hard Rock in Atlantic City.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

There was a moment in the Lionel Richie concert Saturday night at the Hard Rock in Atlantic City, just as Lionel was finishing up the final verse of “Endless Love,” where there was a bit of a commotion in the front row.

A gent had gotten down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend while Lionel was singing the song. Now that’s some pretty romantic and memorable planning by that dude, and it didn’t go unnoticed by Lionel. After he finished the song, he stopped the show and made a big deal out of the moment, the happy couple was shown on the big concert screens, and it all seemed unscripted to me from my vantage point. Lionel seemed to not know about the proposal in advance and veteran performer that he is, he rolled it right into the show.

He dedicated the next song to the woman who had just received the rock, which was the 1977 Commodores hit “Brick House.” It’s a great song, and the story behind it was detailed for me by William A. King of the Commodores for “The Vinyl Dialogues Volume III: Stacks of Wax.”

By the mid-1970s, the Commodores had developed a routine for recording albums. Band members would get together in the middle of October and spend about two months choosing and arranging songs, take a couple of weeks off for Christmas, fly to Motown Records in Los Angeles and spend January and February recording, release the album in the spring and tour in support of the album in the summer.

When the band — William A. King, Ronald LaPread, Thomas McClary, Walter Orange, Lionel Richie and Milan Williams — was getting together songs for its fifth studio album, the self-titled “Commodores” in late 1976, members had chosen and arranged eight songs for the album. They needed one more, though.

But everybody was worn out.

“We had done eight songs and we could not choose the ninth song. Everybody was desperate, everybody was tired, didn’t want to see each other anymore, wanted to go home. We had seen each other every day, seven days a week, for two months,” said William A. King, band’s trumpet player. “We decided to just do something quick, because we only had two days left to get the songs prepared before we left for L.A.”

They all agreed to just throw something together quickly. So Walter Orange sat down at the drum kit and started tapping out a beat. Ronald LaPread added the bass, while King and Richie tried to figure out the horns part to go with it. Thomas McClary added in guitar and Milan Williams joined in on keyboards.

“We were just jamming,” said King. “And we finally got a basic track down.”

There were no lyrics to the riff, so it was suggested that King and Orange both head home after the session and try to write some words to go with it. But time was of the essence. The band needed the lyrics the next day if it was going to complete the ninth song for the album before heading to Los Angeles to record.

“At that time we had cassette tapes, so I was playing it over and over and over again. I was just trying to figure out a starting point,” said King. “But I knew it was going to be about a woman.”

But even after getting home that evening and playing the cassette over and over, King was still stuck. It was getting late, and King’s wife, Shirley Hanna-King, was running out of patience.

“She said, ‘Look, why don’t you turn that tape off? You’ve played it a thousand times; don’t you have that melody in your head yet?’” King recalled his wife saying. “I said, ‘No, I don’t, which is why I keep playing it over and over again.’”

But Shirley Hanna-King had heard enough and retired to a different part of the house where she didn’t have to listen to the tape.

Eventually, King himself ran out of steam.

“I fell asleep, literally with the tape on. It just ran out,” said King. “When I woke up, I had a pad of paper and pencil on my chest. I looked at it and it had all these lyrics written on it. I was looking at it thinking, ‘God, those are some good lyrics.’ And then I looked at the handwriting and it was my wife’s handwriting. So I asked her, “Did you write this?’ And she said,

‘Yeah, I had to do something to keep you from playing that tape all night long because we couldn’t get any sleep.’”

King took the lyrics to the next day’s session and presented them to the Commodores.

“Milan Williams said, ‘Man, these are the best lyrics you’ve ever written,’” said King.

Orange had also done some writing the previous evening, and between the two of them, King and Orange combined their lyrics and came up with a song that would be about a woman who was built like “a brick shithouse.”

The song was “Brick House.” But James Carmichael, who was producing the “Commodores” album, still wasn’t sold on it being the ninth and final song for the record.

“Carmichael wasn’t convinced,” said King. “He listened to it and said, ‘Eh, I’m not too sure about this song.’”

But Orange was. So unbeknownst to the other members of the group, he took the assistant engineer into an adjacent studio, had the track put on and then Orange started singing over the track, adding in the lead vocals. He then took the revised track back to Carmichael and the Commodores to hear the results.

“And everybody went, ‘Oh my God, this is really nice.’ That’s actually how the song got on the album, because Walter went in there and did a demo vocal over it, which convinced everybody that the song was worth going on the album,” said King. “It probably would not have even made it onto the album. We would have just done one fewer song on the record.”

“Brick House” would go to No. 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and No. 4 on the U.S. R&B chart in 1977.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

“Brick House” would be released as a single and go to No. 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and No. 4 on the U.S. R&B chart.

But it wouldn’t be the only hit single from the “Commodores” album, which was released on March 30, 1977. There would be another single that was even bigger.

Richie had a song that, according to King, he must have rewritten a dozen times once the band had gotten to Los Angeles to record. Richie would go into the bathroom at Motown Records, write the lyrics and bring them back out to the band.

“Either Carmichael or one of the guys would go, ‘Eh, these suck.’ And Lionel would go back into the bathroom,” said King. “We had this thing we used to say: ‘Has anybody seen Richie? Oh, he’s in the bathroom.’ The lyrics for that song were written in the bathroom at Motown Studios in Los Angeles.”

The song was “Easy,” and it would be a smash hit. It got to No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard R&B chart and No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

“Even though we hated his first lyrics, ‘Easy’ was easy,” said King. “From the first time he played it, I thought it was a hit song. And I wasn’t alone. I think everybody in the room thought it was a hit song.”

The “Commodores” album itself was also a big hit for the group. It reached No. 1 on the U.S. R&B/Hip-Hop albums chart and No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart.

If you get a chance to see Lionel Richie, buy the ticket. Richie is still in fine voice, he’s a fabulous entertainer and it’s an evening of hit after hit after hit.

Stories behind memorable albums of the 1970s as told by the artists

Tag: Lionel Richie

Whoa-oh-oh, listen to the music: The best concerts of 2019

It’s easy to listen to Lionel Richie sing ‘Brick House’ and other hits all night long