Concert Review Site

How can you not love Tony Bennett? The 83-year-old is still touring and sounding great after more than 60 years in the business. The crooner has a number of shows in Las Vegas lined up after he gets done touring around the Florida pan-handle in recent weeks. The New York City-born singer is a music icon who has certainly made enough money to sit around and do nothing all day if he wanted having sold 50 million records worldwide in his day, but he still keeps up a pretty busy concert schedule. In a recent interview the legend was asked what he does to keep in such great shape at his age and Tony responded, “I stay away from the junk. I’m not in any race to beat out Madonna.” His sense of humor remains as lively as his voice. If you have a chance to see Tony live don’t let it pass you up. The man is a living piece of American history.

The reigning two-year CMA Entertainer of the Year Brad Paisley is cranking out well-recieved performances around the country with his “American Saturday Night” tour. Paisley’s collection of sing-alongs, country rockers, and acoustic ballads combined with his down-to-earth crowd interactions seem to indear him to audiences night after night. On his trademark Fender, Paisley has been exhibiting his world class guitar playing ripping through bluesy solos backed by some of Nashville’s finest musicians. Opening act Miranda Lambert has also been treat for audiences as the promising young performer has set the tone for Paisley’s show with her hit song “White Liar” now topping the country charts. Those who get to catch the last leg of Paisley’s tour will be seeing what appears to be one of the best tours of the year.

The BBC has admitted that they went a bit overboard in their coverage of the release of U2’s album No Line on the Horizon last year. It was early in the spring last year and the BBC changed their logo to read “U2 BBC” or something like that. There were complaints from many quarters that this gave the band too much publicity on the taxpayers’ money. The network has apologized. The band, however, got a lot of great national publicity for this event and that’s good. Who knows whether people like the band that much that or whether they’ve just seen the name on the news so much that they get into the habit of listening to the music. However, they are putting forward a lot of great music, so perhaps it’s just that the network got swept up in the enthusiasm.

Girls out there might not be worried about Argentina crying for them, but they might be crying about Argentina. Apparently Michael Buble has become engaged to Luisana Loreley Lopilato de la Torre, an actress from Argentina. The sadness was practically palpable for people all over the country, as the Canadian crooner’s Facebook status shifted from “In a Relationship” to “Engaged to De La Torre”. He will still be touring and singing great music. Plus, it’s not like he hasn’t been married before. Maybe this one won’t work out either? Anyway, no one wants his relationship to end in sadness, but you can’t blame any of his fans for wishing that he would give them a chance too.

One of the most unnoticed concert stories of the last few years was the Kanye West performance at Bonnaroo in 2008. I was tempted to call it the story of the decade, just because it’s kind of entertaining to me. But it wasn’t entertaining for the people who bought lots of tickets to the festival specifically to see him. In case you don’t remember, he was scheduled to play at a certain time. But then his show was shifted to another stage on the grounds and supposed to start at 2:45 am. And his best fans waited most of the night for him to play. He showed up two hours late to do his light show mostly and it was very short. Afterwards, many fans were furious because of the money they’d spent and how disrespectful he had been. It’s similar to the Taylor Swift interruption. Not a huge disrespect for the world, but the kind of thing most stars don’t even try. Ben Sollee, a folk cellist at the same festival, wrote a song about the fiasco, telling him to do his music, because it’s good music, and don’t get distracted by the lights and thse ego that comes with them.