sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) (06/17/91)
Yes, you read right. Sweet were in Stockholm tonight. The band who gave us "Fox on the Run", "Funny Funny", "Ballroom Blitz" and many other hits. Sweet were indeed much of a production, without Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman who wrote all their hits before "Fox on the Run" they would never have made it. But they did do some quite good stuff on their own too. Anyway, for us who were in our lower teens when they were popular, Sweet was a part of our growing up. The special thing with Sweet was that both boys and girls liked them. The girls were mad about Brian Connolly, and we boys liked the music. So it's not strange that their name is still alive, even they fell rather quickly in obscurity. Now, the Sweet I saw tonight was not the same band. Only Andy Scott remained from the original band. The drummer Mick Tucker had apparently started the tour, but had not felt well and had had to give up after a week. One could question if these nostalgia trips can be more than just pathetic, but they certainly can be. Earlier this year I saw Bachman Turner Overdrive make one hell of a rock show. Sweet did not match BTO, but made a fair show. Their biggest problem was the sound. The quality was OK with some noticeable exceptions in the bass, but it was much to loud for this venue, Melody a club which takes around 1.000 people. They started with two newer songs, "Action" and another, which were quite OK, before they got on to "The Six-Teens" which was followed by maybe the best number "Sweet F.A.". They played one more newer, "Cockroach", then they only played oldies. They had actually taken the effort to redo some of the songs, "Restless" had a jazzy section with solos for piano and guitar. And "Love Is Like Oxygen" - which I don't think I had heard before, good tune - was split in two piece by the biggest surprise for the night: Aaron Copeland's "Fanfare the Common Man". Sweet's rendition of this song owed a lot Keith Emerson's arrangement on ELP's "Works I". Other songs which they played: "No You Don't", "AC-DC" (one I could have been without), "Teenage Rampage", "Set Me Free" (with a wild drum solo), "Lady Starlight" (only Andy Scott), "Hell Racer", "Fox on the Run", "Block Buster" and as the final encore of course, "Ballroom Blitz". Andy Scott and the replacement musicians were OK with one exceptio: I didn't like the singer. He was a poor substitute for Brian Connolly. Connolly was maybe not so a fantastic vocalist, but he had his special phrasing which this guy simply ignored. (It was interesting to notice that I could easily fill in Connolly's way of singing in the songs I didn't remember so well.) And they didn't play "Funny, Funny".... -- Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se