Hall & Oates

August 6th Tonight was a perfect night to go to Coney Island to see rock 'n soul duo Hall and Oates. These guys were huge in the 70's and 80's so it was a night of nostalgia. These concerts tend to draw an older crowd (like us!) and tonight the crowd was huge. We managed to get seats but people were standing about 10 deep as far back as the Boardwalk so perhaps there were 20,000 there. The audience want to hear all the old hits and that is mostly what they got. Hall & Oates had 6 no.1 hits and many more songs that made the charts. They hail from Philadelphia and their specialty is blues eyed soul or as they call it rock 'n soul! They had some great ballads too. Who could ever forget `She's gone?' They played one long set which began with their big hit `Maneater'.and worked their way through all their big hits like ``One on one' `Say it isn't so' `Family man' `Out of touch' and `Sara smile and ending with Kiss on my list' and `Private eyes'. They included some lesser known songs too. The audience loved all the old tunes and sang along especially with `Everybody's high on consolation' which was what they called `She's gone' . I've been checking out the Tavares version which is also great. The 8 piece band were very tight and Tom `T Bone' Wolk on guitar played some outstanding solos on an amplified acoustic guitar especially on `Its uncanny' a lesser known funky tune from their earlier period.


Sax player Charles deChant was also fantastic. He could sound like Maceo Parker but also get mellow with the soprano sax and flute. With Darryl Hall on amplified acoustic rhythm guitar for most of the set and John Oates also playing some great solos on electric guitar plus a band consisting of keyboards, drums. congas and bass, the band had a great groove. For the last few numbers Hall moved to the keyboard which gave an even fuller sound. These guys must be around 60 as they had their first hit back in 1976 and were recording long before that but they looked and sounded great even though some friends felt their voices had lost their edge. Their recordings always had high quality production and I felt that they managed to almost reproduce the smooth sounds of their records. Everyone loved these guys and even young people seemed to know all their songs!