The Zombies - Bruce Sudano
It's an astonishing sixty years since vocalist Colin Blunstone and keyboardist Rod Argent first set up shop, and on the evidence of their performance at Epic they are still fighting fit. Rod Argent's keyboard skills were as nimble as ever, while Blunstone's fine voice was impeccable all night. For men in their late seventies, the combination was little short of astonishing.
David Auckland
Given the resurgence of bands from earlier times, many garnering far greater success now than ever before, it’s not unusual to start doing the sums. Can it really be twenty, thirty, forty years since I first saw them? Or even last saw them. With regard to the Zombies, however, even I'm not old enough to have caught them first time around. It's an astonishing sixty years since vocalist Colin Blunstone and keyboardist Rod Argent first set up shop, and on the evidence of their performance at Epic they are still fighting fit.
Before coming to them, however, let's consider singer/songwriter Bruce Sudano. My goodness, the man likes to talk. My glass-half-full companion thought his time on stage was best thought of as a TED talk with the occasion tunes lobbed in, and there's no doubt the man has stories to tell. However, there's only so much railing against an unjust world you can take, not least from a successful song writer that was married to Donna flippin' Summer for thirty years, for goodness sake. Her untimely death must have been awful for him, but what a life they must have had in the preceding years. It would have been nice to hear more of that. Tellingly, a highlight of his otherwise maudlin set was an improbable acoustic version of Bad Girls, which was a novelty to say the least. I checked out her excellent version post gig and let's just say it became clear why the missus did the singing. Otherwise it was wall to wall misery that I found introspective and indulgent, but some folk go for that sort of thing in spades, and it was only half an hour. A long half an hour, though.
The Zombies appearance on stage was heralded by a woman introducing them as recent inductees into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Factually correct, but I can't imagine Radiohead, The Cure or Black Sabbath kick their gigs off in this way. To my mind it spoke of insecurity that our appreciation wouldn't otherwise come as readily as it should, but then it is surprising how little commercial success the Zombies achieved in their own country. As Rod Argent pointed out, Time of the Season was a monster hit across the world, but not in dear old Blighty, despite repeated attempts to convince us. It was telling that the evening opened with two covers. Not of other people's music - I Want You Back Again and I Love You were hits for Tom Petty and People in other parts of the world – here they were met with indifference.
Perhaps, deep down, the band knew why all along. Rod Argent certainly shared the group’s frustration with early recordings and, tellingly, it was when the evening moved on to a selection from the self-produced Odyssey and Oracle that things started to liven up. Along the way we had You've Really Got a Hold on Me - a reminder that even the uninitiated know more Zombie songs than they think they do - but it was the eccentric Care of Cell 44 that truly showcased Colin Blunstone's fine voice. His singing was impeccable all night, and for a man in his late seventies, little short of astonishing. Imposingly tall, and strikingly lithe, should Zombies the Biography ever come to our screens, Bill Nighy is a dead cert for the lead.
Striking, too, was Rod Argent's keyboard skills, as nimble as ever as the band performed music from the new album. The material stood up well, with the eponymous Different Game particularly deserving of the praise the album has received. And when a song from Rod Argent's next band was sneaked into the set the evening really took off. The classic Hold Your Head Up from Argent's All Together Now album had the somewhat sedentary audience nodding in time, singing along and clapping away. Argent was in his element, noodling away, Keith Emerson style, quoting everyone from Bach to Ian Dury. Inevitably, the set culminated with She's Not There, their big UK hit, though it was the encore that followed, a delightfully intimate rendition of The Way I Feel Inside from just Argent and Blumstone, that resonated more deeply. A second encore followed, with Colin Blunstone's cover Of Denny Laine's Say you Don't Mind. It was a fitting end to an evening that looked forward as well as back. It certainly set the heads off again. Rarely have I seen so many nodding rhythmically in approval.
