What goes up, must come down...

No, not a Viagra antidote, but a Friday night concert by Blood, Sweat  Tears at the Wolf Den with The Reet, Keith and Sharie, chosen over Rosie Ledet & the Zydeco Playboys at Cafe Nine and a jazz night at Firehouse 12.  Rush hour traffic screws up our plans to get there early, but it's pouring out, there is no worry of a big crowd.  Very wrong, when we arrive after an over-priced stop at Johnny Rocket's (I know, not the healthiest of choices), the line is unbelievable!  What the hell is going on, we'll never get in?  Off to the bordering bar to get a place on the rail, next to a middle-aged guy with long curly blond hair down his back and his blocky transgender-looking girlfriend.  Reet is off to play video poker.  We note that Stephen Stills and Leon Russell will each be playing The Den in the next couple months.

(from Wikipedia, so it must be true)- Blood, Sweat & Tears (also known as "BS&T") is an American music group, originally formed in 1967 in New York City. Since its beginnings in 1967, the band has gone through numerous iterations with varying personnel and has encompassed a multitude of musical styles. What the band is most known for, from its start, is the fusing of rock, blues, pop music, horn arrangements and jazz improvisation into a hybrid that came to be known as "jazz-rock". Unlike "jazz fusion" bands, which tend toward virtuostic displays of instrumental facility and some experimentation with electric instruments, the songs of Blood, Sweat & Tears merged the stylings of rock, pop and R&B/soul music with big band, while also adding elements of 20th Century Classical and small combo jazz traditions.

After an hour standing (Sharie and the GF are elbowing for position), the band is finally introduced.   Lots of pretty old guys, but no David Clayton-Thomas, replaced by a younger lead singer with a very weird combjob.  Call me cynical, but I'm not a fan of groups that have no original members, it's not a baseball team, an analogy the band makes in its promotion.  The large crowd is enthusiastic as they run though a bunch of the hits, but, while the backing musicians are quite good, I'm finding the new lead singer, Jason Page, annoying, a theatrical entertainer with a high-pitched voice as opposed to the more soulful Clayton-Thomas.

Some of the offerings:
Spinning Wheel
Laura Nyro's When I Die
God Bless the Child
Carol King's Hi-De-Ho

Lucretia MacEvil
Lonesome Susie

For the encore they do Talking Heads' Burning Down the House and finish with a nice version of the classic You Make Me So Very Happy.  They seem to have made the crowd very happy.  Fun night.  And Sharie and GF became fast friends!