"This is the best concert ever."

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a huge Huey Lewis and the News fan. It started as an ironic affection, but at some point Huey became what I sing at Karaoke and what is on my iPod while I am running, and I began to honestly love this band. So while it is hilarious that I flew to Cleveland to drive to Atlantic City to see Huey Lewis and the News perform at Caesars Palace, it is not surprising.

Huey turned 60 years old last week. He looks good, but he does not look young. He still rocks out on stage, though these days his dancing is awkward and jerky and resembles a marching penguin.

The big news from the show is that the band is working on a new CD. It is 'soul music'. They insisted on opening the show with several songs from the new album, which was not really what the crowd had in mind. If you have heard 'Doin' It All for my Baby' you know that Huey owns great pop music. Imagine this very same voice singing blues music… it is not good.

After several songs from the new album, Huey informed us that he was taking it 'way back'. The crowd went wild. The three minutes of 'I Want a New Drug' was enough to erase the 30 minutes of horrible blues we had heard before. They are still brilliant when they stick to what they do best. Scott Lee leaned over during this song and said 'This is the best concert ever'.

Unfortunately, what they do best was short lived. After one good song we were forced to listen to a segment that Huey called 'our greatest misses' in which they played songs that they believe to be very good but no one else seemed to like much. They then treated us to an two accapella songs. The sparkely backdrop that showed up for this segment of the show was almost suffiecient distraction to ignore the truly bad harmonies of 'under the boardwalk', a song they did not write and should not perform.

After one more song from the new album, Huey and his News were ready to call it a night after less than 60 minutes of music. I would have been very unhappy if it hadn't been abundantly clear that they inteneded to play a long encore. Huey returned to the stage at the crowds urging, sheepishly saying 'well if you insist' and getting ready to sing another song. This would almost have been believable if he hadn't have gotten distracted by fixing some equipment for a minute and then returned to the mic saying 'if you insist' in the exact same rehersed sheepish tone. You can't blame him for the short term memory loss. Old age plus 80s rock star cocaine habits…

The encore was the performance we all showed up to see. 'The Power of Love' was every bit as good as I imagined it to be. The crowd of middle aged to edelerly concert goers went wild. They were rocking out like it was 1979. Then a beautiful rendition of 'Do You Believe in Love' and a powerful 'Workin' for a Livin'' closed out the show. The brass section owned the songs. Huey's voice sounded every bit as good as it did nearly 30 years ago. I danced. I sang along. I loved every second of it.

While I agree with Mike Ham that this is the most absurd concert I have ever attended, the encore alone was worth the 3000 mile trip.