Review: Dexys at The Halls, Wolverhampton
He may have been in the music business for some 45 years now, but this was still a rare home town show for Kevin Rowland, writes Peter Carroll.
And the fans who packed the Civic to see the latest incarnation of his band were delighted to find the singer in great form at the age of 70.
The angry, confrontational frontman of yore has mellowed into a flamboyantly-dressed, elder statesman of pop, who peppers his stage banter with Wolves references.
These days the band are no longer called Dexys Midnight Runners – to reflect the fact that they are a different proposition from the original incarnation which was formed in the West Midlands at the tailend of punk all those years ago.
That said, the traditional elements of a Dexys show are all present and correct; the parping horns, the female fiddler, the quirky dialogues between Rowland and his band members – and, of course, the top tunes.
The show is divided, theatre-style, into two sections, with an intermission between them. The first part serves as a dramatic showcase for Rowland's new album The Feminine Divine.
If the singer appeared slightly nervous as to how the first section would go down he needn't have been - his fans are long accustomed to expecting the unexpected.
The crowd listened attentively to the new songs and when the concluding number, the soothing funk of Dance With Me, is greeted with a partial standing ovation, Rowland is clearly delighted.
He kicked off the second section of the show with a walk through the crowd and then it was into Plan B. The second half is mostly tracks from the band's classic first albums but there is nothing, alas, from the criminally underrated Don't Stand Me Down album.
Geno draws a huge cheer, of course, and there is a joyful run through Come On Eileen which has the crowd dancing in the aisles. Then he slows it down with a powerful version of the traditional Irish ballad Carrickfergus.
The set featured a series of photos personal to Rowland projected onto a screen but none gets a bigger cheer than the image of the late darts player Jocky Wilson, as a nod to the band's infamous performance of Jackie Wilson Said on Top of the Pops way back in the day.
The crowd liked Jackie Wilson Said so much the band did it again as the closing number.
