Sat 10/15
Every Cleveland music buff knows how Michael Stanley sold out shows at Blossom Music Center while playing 3,000-seat theaters elsewhere. But there was another act that did the same — Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes. They were from New Jersey but they might as well have been local for all the airplay they got on WMMS-FM — Kid Leo was their loudest booster — and the way fans flocked to their shows, including 20,000 of them to sold-out nights at Blossom.
Forty-six years after the band released its first album, I Don’t Want to Go Home, which laid down the template for their R&B- and blues-infused rock & roll, vocalist Southside Johnny Lyon continues to perform with a whole different lineup of the Jukes, but still featuring that big blast of horns. He hasn’t changed much either: his voice is still gravelly but strong; his performances are passionate and committed; and he still looks like a 60-something old bluesman he resembled in his late 20s, only now he’s actually 73. He never really looked young!
Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes will be back at the MGM Grand this weekend on the heels of a new live CD. It features a recording of a show the band performed at the Cleveland Agora on May 2, 1977, released, appropriately, on the revived Cleveland International label, started by record executive, the late Steve Popovich, in 1976, to promote Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, and revive by his son, Steve Popovich Jr, to reissue old material as well as new material in a similar midwestern blue-collar rock vein. The cover and inside photos were taken at the Agora by CoolCleveland’s Anastasia Pantsios.
The 13-track album will bring back memories for those who saw the band in its late 70s-early 80s prime. It includes all the band’s “hits” (alas, they were never chart makers like the similar rock/R&B-style J. Geils) such as “The Fever” and “I Don’t Want to Go Home” from their 1976 debut album, “Without Love” and “This Time It’s for Real” from their 1977 followup, their longtime show-ending rave-up “We’re Having a Party,” and as a special treat, their version of Billy Joel’s “Say Goodbye to Hollywood,” with the legendary Ronnie Spector joining them onstage.
The band still performs most of those songs, along with a copious selection of covers and new material, drawn from the newly two dozen studio albums Southside has recorded both with and without the Jukes. Fans who attend the MGM Grand show will still experience much of the magic heard on the 1977 release.