We travelled in from North Wales, stayed over and had a great couple of days in the city, but as Jon Clarke has already said this was not one that will go down as a "classic" Todd show in my view. After seeing Todd 'at it' in various guises since 1975 at the Liverpool Empire this show unfortunately sits low down the list and a disappointment for me and my wife. However, there is a big 'BUT' in here and its this. We've had Utopia, Todd solo, the London 'Venue' shows, TRi, the rockin' Arena shows, Todd & Joe, AWATS at Hammersmith, TR's Johnson and the fantastic October 2011 Ritz show (on our wedding anniversary, which I reviewed on TRC back then) and all have been groundbreaking/different in some way. Not all these shows will have sent everybody home happy, but that does not make for a bad show. Tonight Todd's voice was immense, the sound was clear, if loud, with few technical problems, but I'm 55yrs old and can really do without club/dance/beats/techno (not sure how its described by the youngsters!), but Todd has to be applauded for doing something different and not resting on his laurels. I would guess most of the audience was waiting for an oldies slot and it came - but at some speed and "I Saw the Light" etc does not lend itself to such techno-beats. During the encore as Todd pleaded "...lets admit we made a mistake but can we still be friends..." I thought to myself "yes, of course" and come back soon.
Todd was gracious enough to speak with us and shake a few hands before the show and it was a first for me and the highlight of my weekend. He gave us time to take some pics and seemed relaxed as he posed in his "chimp" t-shirt, opposite the "Gorilla" bar (there's spooky!?) outside the Ritz.
So, go with open mind and judge for yourselves, dont be put off by my ramblings we're all different..............see you next time round!
