Concert Review: Little Steven & The Disciples Of Soul – Auckland Town Hall April 27, 2019

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Springsteen wing man, Little Steven Van Zandt closed out his Soulfire Tour at Auckland’s Town Hall in front of a sparse crowd.

Yes, there was a lot of empty space on the floor of the Town Hall when Little Steven led his Disciples Of Soul out onto the stage, shortly after 8pm. In fact, the joke going around was that there were more people on stage than in the audience.

But Little Steven, who was backed by 14 other musicians including a five-piece horn section, three female backing vocalists, two keyboard players, a drummer, a percussionist, plus bass player and guitarist, would not be deterred.

The man is full of the rock and soul fire and he came out blasting with a raucous version of Arthur Conley’s 1967 classic, Sweet Soul Music.

This, unfortunately, would become one of the highlights of a show that was long in duration, but short on great songs.

I was hoping that Steven and his impressive band would mix plenty of his favourite hits of the sixties in amongst his own tune, but that wasn’t to be the case.

The cover of Etta James’ The Blues Is My Business that came a few songs later gave me further hope, but then it was a steady diet of Little Steven’s own songs, some recorded by Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes, that made up the majority of this sprawling, two and a half hour show.

In fact, the other cover they performed, James Brown’s Down And Out In New York City, from the soundtrack to Black Caesar, was, for me, the low point of the show. Not only was it stretched out interminably to accommodate a string of solos, but, worst of all, it just wasn’t funky.

There’s no doubt that Little Steven is passionate about music, and I share his love of the great radio hits of the 1960s, but often, his between song banter felt like the rantings of a person left in the past.

He took time to remind of us of an old-time technical invention called “radio”…yes Steven, we are familiar with it, most of us listen to it daily.

This would have been bearable if the songs had been up to snuff and the sound had been decent. But, what I heard up in the seated area, sounded like a trebly mush…perhaps because of the lack of bodies in the venue causing the music to echo around the room.

It was a frustrating night. And it could have been so much better. I would have loved to have heard the three backing vocalists take centre stage and perform a few classic girl group numbers with this terrific band. I would have loved to have heard keyboard player Lowell (“Banana”) Levinger, an original member of sixties band The Youngbloods, perform Get Together, or even, Darkness, Darkness.

Instead we were treated to a rather pointless version of Steven’s mid-eighties protest song, Sun City as part of the encore. That battle has been fought and won.

Oh well, I did enjoy listening to the pre-show music over the PA…hearing The Jellybeans’ I Wanna Love Him So Bad followed by The Inner Light by The Beatles made me smile. I just wish the concert itself had similar moments.

Marty Duda

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Marty Duda
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