Tom Jones International

On behalf of the fans who cannot get to shows this run in the northeast, just a word to thank all of those who take the time to send reviews and photos. It is very generous and helps us experience the show, too. If you were in DC or will be in Albany tonight, Jersey tomorrow (will Bruce drop in?), Boston on Sunday or Cleveland, Tuesday please if you can, tell us and show us how it was. Thanks!

Chuck very kindly sent this photo last night from the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. The capacity at the club is 1,200 people. He also sent a set list which, once again, includes Here’s That Rainy Day: I’m Alive, In Style and Rhythm, Help Yourself, Seasons, Delilah, 200 Pounds, Give A Little Love, If He should Ever Leave You, The Road, Here’s That Rainy Day, Fly Me To the Moon, Ol’ Black Magic, Grandma’s Hands, Git Me Some, She’s A Lady, I’ll Never Fall In Love Again, Green, Green Grass of Home, What’s New Pussycat, You Can Leave Your Hat On, Sex Bomb, It’s Not Unusual Encore: Venus, Kiss.

It is almost impossible to imagine what it’s like to be Sir Tom and stand there facing this crowd and seeing them whipped into a frenzy by your gift. No wonder he loves what he does!

As for being in the audience, Linda, a fan who has seen Tom in a variety of venues, writes: “I must say that this venue (one I’ve never experienced) is an amazing way to see Tom. No comp tickets or casual attendance from visitors who happen to be in a casino/hotel. Those who waited in the cold line outside to see Tom were the most enthusiastic I’ve seen. They were all about The Man.

“I tried to get up front but the floor packed in quickly and then my legs just couldn’t take it. I went up to the balcony (stage left) and watched the show from there. Certainly gives you a different perspective. Talk about cheering. screaming fans — men and women alike (noise levels unbelievable).

“You could tell there was a love affair going on between the audience and Tom. Definitely different than a sit-down venue. This venue is probably the best place to see bands and for the fans up front it had to be an unforgettable experience. You could almost reach out and touch him! Oh, and of course the usual panties, bras, notes and keys were lobbed on stage.”

Here’s two not-too-bad videos from Terminal 5. It’s Tom singing Help Yourself and I’ll Never Fall In Love Again.

AND! Here’s another review of Terminal 5 that is oddly schizophrenic. It compares Tom to Barry Manilow and Neil Diamond and says his fans are old. But it concludes with (the somewhat erroneous) “When you see a 67-year-old singer earn his thrown panties instead of getting them tossed his way solely on his reputation, you’ve seen something inspiring.” Someone needs to, as Kate Winslet said at the Globes, “gather.” After you read it, be sure to post a comment (pro or con).

There’s lots of good stuff posted below on this page. If you haven’t been here since about 6 pm Wednesday PST, be sure to scroll down and check it out.

From Wednesday night in DC, we have a terrific photo that give you a real sense of what it must be like to be Tom Jones standing onstage looking out. That’ll be posted tomorrow. And it proves a picture is worth a thousand words.

With a wind chill that makes it feel like 29º F, the weather in Albany, NY is actually OK for winter. That can be a cold, cold place. But Tom should heat it up tomorrow night.

Tom Jones brings crazy sexy cool swagger to Palace Theatre

By GREG HAYMES, Staff writer/First published in print: Thursday, February 26, 2009/Albany Times Union

The album is chock-full of power, bravado and swagger. It’s the kind of sound that fills a dance floor and keeps it jumping and thumping late into the night.

Produced by the red-hot British duo Future Cut — who have helmed recent projects for Lily Allen, Kate Nash and Estelle — 24 Hours crackles with an electrifying, thoroughly contemporary sound. It features a new tune written by U2′s Bono and the Edge (the braggadociolicious Sugar Daddy), a potent cover of Bruce Springsteen’s The Hitter and a handful of tracks co-authored by the latest addition to “American Idol” (songwriter and new “AI” judge Kara DioGuardio).

So it might come as something of a surprise that “24 Hours” isn’t the fresh, new debut album by some overhyped Next Big Thing from Britain.

No, it’s the latest album from Tom Jones.

Yes, the very same Tom Jones who burst into the international pop music spotlight more than four decades ago with such blockbuster tunes as It’s Not Unusual and What’s New, Pussycat? earning him the Grammy Award as Best New Artist way back in 1965.

Not that he ever went away, but Tom Jones is back in a big way with his first U.S. album in 15 years and an American tour that makes a stop at the Palace Theatre tonight.

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There’s lots of video posted below on this page, including some posted earlier Wednesday. Be sure to check it out.

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Jon Pareles — first string music writer for The New York Times — reviewed the show at Terminal 5 last night and he clearly got it right. The photo on the top, captioned “Fans of all ages turned out to see Tom Jones perform at Terminal 5 on Tuesday” is of three of the greatest fans (from left) Mary, Patti and Ilona. Both photos are by Nicholas Roberts for The New York Times.

Music Review

A One-Man Variety Show Who Can Still Get the Fans Screaming

By JON PARELES/Published: February 25, 2009/New York Times

Silver-haired and 68, Tom Jones was still the target of flying undergarments when he performed at Terminal 5 on Tuesday night. He drew happy screams when he ran a hand along his thigh, tossed away his jacket or widened his eyes as he delivered a risqué lyric.

Tom Jones sang selections from his latest album, 24 Hours, as well as hits like It’s Not Unusual and Delilah at Terminal 5 on Tuesday night.

Mr. Jones has sung pop hits, swiveled his hips and faced squealing crowds since the 1960s, when he emerged as a Welsh successor to Elvis Presley. After years on the casino circuit — and a knighthood in 2006 — he plays the sex symbol with ease and amusement for crowds that may still feel a tingle or two. Later generations of bands and producers, particularly in Britain, have periodically modernized his music, savoring his voice as both a vigorous baritone and an artifact of the 1960s.

Last year Mr. Jones became a singer-songwriter with the album 24 Hours (S-Curve), his first United States release in 15 years and the first of his albums on which he collaborated on writing most of the songs. He also joined the British wave of retro soul, using producers who programmed vintage samples into tracks that wrap some old-fashioned ambience around the mechanization of hip-hop. On the album he sings about love, lust and — in songs like I’m Alive, which opened the Terminal 5 set, and Seasons — the perseverance of a trouper who still has his old gusto.

His set at Terminal 5 was a one-man variety show, divided among the new album, old hits and songs borrowed from Frank Sinatra and Howlin’ Wolf. He brought a full band — with a horn section and shimmying backup singers — that hopscotched through eras and styles: big-band swing, 1960s soul, disco, waltzes. His repertory is one Welshman’s grab bag of American music, connected by his attentiveness to the ladies and the way he sings.

Mr. Jones’s strategic secret is that while he has a big voice, he applies it lightly, even glancingly, opening it up only at peak moments. It makes him sound fondly flirtatious rather than blustery, secure but not overbearing.

The songs that became his hits are an unlikely assortment. Some proffer romance, like It’s Not Unusual, Help Yourself” — a polka! — and She’s a Lady. Some revel in desire, like What’s New, Pussycat? and his 2000 British hit Sex Bomb. And some are fascinatingly morbid, like The Green, Green Grass of Home, a jailbird’s countryish daydream about the idyllic hometown where he’ll be buried, and Delilah, an exuberant waltz about a cheating lover and what may be a knifepoint murder.

Mr. Jones sang them all with knowing smiles and rakish aplomb. When he got to Prince’s Kiss, from the comeback Mr. Jones made in 1988, and the line “I know how to undress me,” he pulled up his shirt to bare his tummy. The crowd whooped its approval, ironic or not.

Tom Jones will be at the Palace Theater in Albany on Thursday and the Paramount Theater in Asbury Park, N.J., on Friday; tomjones.com.

From Vanity Fair’s Culture and Celebrity Blog comes this review by Bruce Handy. Be sure to read the last line. Actually, read it all with a sense of humor and you will laugh.

This Is Still Tom Jones

One of the greatest living practitioners of heterosexual camp was in town last night, and I don’t mean Madonna. Tom Jones, performing at Terminal 5, wailed his way through an hour and a half set and proved he still has what it takes to inspire women to throw panties and bras on stage, a ritual that has been going on for 40 years and and across tens of thousands of renditions of “It’s Not Unusual.” “Whooo! Yeah! Thank you!” the singer shouted with enthusiasm and seeming sincerity after nearly number last night. That was when he wasn’t popping his eyes wide to suggest he nevertheless felt a little sheepish at still being able to get over so easily, and at the age of 68, just by growling in the middle of a song or caressing his crotch or turning his back and doing a few steps of male hootchie-cootchie. True, Jones may have thickened since his prime, and his moves have stiffened, but when has a little joint discomfort ever been a match for the iron will of a true entertainer? At times he came across like the cool but incorrigible grandpa dirty dancing at someone’s bar mitzvah, and, assuming he wasn’t your grandpa, you had to love him.

Anyway, setting aside the singing cocksman schtick that has long been his stock in trade—as a young singer in the mid-60s, Jones picked up swiveling where the neutered Elvis Presley had left off, adding a gamier, musk-scented masculinity all his own—this performer’s true calling card has always been the pipes. His is a wide-ranging voice with the force of an entire brass section, or possibly a wind tunnel, distilled into a single socko instrument. The timbre has thickened a bit with the years, but only a bit, and, amazingly, Jones has lost none of his lung power. He was actually inbetter voice last night than he is on his recently released record, 24 Hours, where he occasionally sounds hoarse. (The record itself is a canny marvel of retro-styled production and song-writing, with three or four tracks that could slip unobtrusively onto a CD of Jones’s greatest hits from the 60s and 70s.) Watching him swagger with all due brio through the best of the new songs as well as classics like Delilah, Green, Green Grass of Home, Sex Bomb, and—inevitably, thankfully—She’s a Lady (but, sigh, no Thunderball), plus a couple of swampy blues numbers that bordered on caricature and were redeemed by a gospel tinged song he invested with real feeling, I began to think of Jones as a vintage, well-tended muscle car: if the suspension was a little ragged, the paint job was still shiny and the motor was gunning. The audience—a mix of ages and seemingly spanning the spectrum from true believers to ironists—was eager to be taken for a ride, or maybe just run over. And so we were. Wham, bam, thank you, sir!

For those of you who missed the show—the first stop on his national tour—you can find all sorts of great Tom Jones clips on Youtube.

One other thing. Jones was born in Wales, in Trefforest, Pontypridd. Not that you care; I just wanted to type it.

Illustration by Risko.

Today on The View Sherri Shepard talked about being at the show last night. The photo shows her demonstrating bra-throwing technique. And the speculation from Whoppi and Joy on what would happen if she did so is very funny. So, here’s a clip of The View today as Sherri talks Tom. (It’s a RealPlayer file.)

Shooting from the balcony, someone took a video of the encore — Venus and Kiss. It’s not good video, but it sure whets a fan’s appetite for the real thing. You can see it in in the TJI.com Video Library.

Tony Sachs, a New York-based writer who reviewed 24 Hours with the declaration, “the man’s an artist, dammit!” was at Terminal 5 last night. He wrote a review for TJI.com

If you were in New York last night and saw squealing women throwing their panties at a 68-year-old British knight who was performing a Howlin’ Wolf song, you were undoubtedly at Terminal 5, checking out Tom Jones’ first NYC appearance since November 2006.

Sir Tom’s hair and goatee are gray now, and he’s put on a few pounds, but his voice is, if anything, fuller and more resonant than it was when he first hit the pop charts back in 1965. And while a good chunk of his audience may have aged along with him, he still drives the ladies wild — at Terminal 5, TJ put the “sex” back in “sexagenarian.”

No Tom Jones show would be complete without his signature ‘60s and ‘70s hits like Help Yourself, Delilah, It’s Not Unusual and She’s A Lady.Venus and Kiss that left the crowd screaming for more. And thankfully for New Yorkers, there will be more – this July, at the newly refurbished Beacon Theater. Leave your worries on the doorstep and your panties on the stage.

Also: Be sure to check out the TJI.com flickr set The Many Faces of Tom Onstage for new photos from Terminal 5. They’re from livedaily.com photographer Christopher Owyoung whose website is well worth checking out. One is posted above left. Professional photographers were allowed to shoot for the first two songs (standard practice).

The gang is off to DC for tonight at the 9:30 Club. Meanwhile, there are some reports from last night’s NYC show. More will be posted if and when they come in today. In addition to the celebs named below, The View’s Sherri Shepard was reported to be in the room. If you haven’t seen it, video of Tom’s appearance on The View can be found in the TJI.com Video Library.

Touring seems to be helping the CD sales. It is not on any chart (if you know differently, please drop a line) but amazon.co.uk has 24 Hours at #5 in All Easy Listening; #6 in Dance Pop and #8 in Dance & Electronic. Amazon in the US has it #3 in Classic Pop; #8 in Dance & Electronic and #9 in Dance Pop. This is great news.

Reports from Terminal 5 say everyone had a blast. The word is Tom dropped Here’s That Rainy Day (IMHO the best of the standards) and added a “rockin’” version of Venus to the encore. Here’s a blurry clip.

Whitney Matheson in the USA Today’s Popcandy blog, says, “Hello! I hope you’re all feeling great this morning. Last night I went to see Tom Jones, and, I have to tell you, it was the most fun I’ve had at a concert in awhile. The man may be 68, but his voice sounds as smooth as ever … and he did his share of shaking and sliding onstage.

“Everyone in the crowd sang along with hits like She’s a Lady, What’s New Pussycat?, Delilah, Help Yourself (my favorite!), Green Green Grass of Home and It’s Not Unusual. And he really pulled out all the stops for the two-song encore: It started with a cover of Venus and ended with Jones’ sexy version of Prince’s Kiss.

“Of course, I’d heard about the panty-tossing thing, but I never really believed until I saw it with my own eyes. Women really do throw their underwear onstage during Jones’ set. He never really acknowledged it, but by the end of the show, panties of all colors were strewn across the stage.

“Jones is touring to support his new record, 24 Hours. I highly recommend you see him live. Rachael Ray and Bernadette Peters were among those enjoying the man who referred to himself as 200 pounds of heavenly joy.” I, for one, will be feeling the after-effects for weeks.”

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Don’t forget to check out the video from The View below.

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Even though it’s on no official schedule yet, it looks like Tom will be playing an 8 p.m. show at the Beacon Theatre July 21. Tickets went on sale at 5 pm today at Ticketmaster.com. Prices go from $35 to $95 plus an $11.55 convenience charge.

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The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled hearings next Tuesday on the proposed Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger. Here’s hearing information. If you have an opinion, let your senator or congressmember know about it. ASAP! Just call their local office or email them. You can find the right person by visiting this site.

Sorry for the delay in getting this posted, but real life sometimes intervenes.

At any rate, Tom was as usual charming on The View and, in addition to the chat, he sang two songs. (And, see, we noted yesterday that they are called “The Ladies” of The View.)

You can see the entire appearance — including the very cute show opener — in the TJI.com Video Library.

Also, if you watched the show, you may have noticed that the last commercial spot was for the new ABC show. Cupid. It’s been mentioned here and on other message boards that the theme they’re using is Give A Little Love.

You can see the Cupid ad here. Just couldn’t resist.

(PS: Something very weird came via a google news alert today…..Dated December 31, 2005 it was a very brief CBS News video clip to go with the announcement that Tom Jones was on the Queen’s New Year’s Honors list. Odd.)

Be sure you haven’t missed the audio clip from Tom’s recording with Tower of Power. It was posted yesterday below the Ticketmaster post. And don’t forget to watch Tom with “the ladies” on The View Wednesday morning.

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From metro.us. Nothing new, but it’s great that they’re using new photos, isn’t it? Hope to see more of these articles in the major papers in NY, DC, Boston and Cleveland. Right now, in NY at least, Leonard Cohen (!) is taking the concert spotlight. (If you don’t know who he is, just google.)

For Welsh crooner, it’s still not unusual

At 68, Tom Jones still trying new things in the music biz

When it comes to singing, it’s no exaggeration to say that few can match the Welsh.

“It’s something in the language,” muses one of the most famous Welsh vocalists, veteran pop idol Tom Jones. “It’s a tradition: the male voice choirs; the singing room in the pubs. All you needed was a piano and someone to play it. It’s the cheapest way to hear music,” he adds.

Since the mid ’60s, the 68-year-old has belted out such memorable songs as It’s Not Unusual — “The most important song; my first hit.” — and What’s New Pussycat? — “Burt Bach­arach told me, ‘It’s a nutty song for a nutty movie.’”

In later years, Jones notched up iconic covers like the kitsch version of Prince’s Kiss, which revitalized his career in the ’80s. His latest album, last fall’s 24 Hours,” includes the left-field choice of Bruce Springsteen’s lesser-traveled “The Hitter.” The upbeat new record paired Jones with London-based producers Future Cut (Lily Allen, Katy Perry), who sampled his older song I’ll Never Let You Go for the newly written If He Should Ever Leave You. However, the disc includes a fresh new songwriting voice: his own. For the first time, Jones is co-credited as a songwriter. This late-life writing foray wasn’t a need for reflection, though. It was a necessity.

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As discussed here a few weeks ago, Ticketmaster has a habit of declaring concerts sold out and, then, redirecting potential buyers to it’s subsudiary, TicketsNow, where tickets with a face value of $65 to $95 were being sold for prices ranging from $200 to $5,000. They did it with Tom last year in Atlantic City.

You can read the article in The New York Daily News.

And, hopefully, if you become aware this is happening, you’ll complain about scalping to your state’s Attorney General. If you need help doing that, drop an email to me. — Ellen