The Sadies (Album releases)

24 October 2008

The Sadies
St Bonaventures, Bristol
Thursday, October 23, 2008

The Sadies are the best live band in the world. There, I’ve said it. I know it’s a preposterous thing to say, since everyone from the Rolling Stones to all the jazz bands in the world would make that claim, but still, I’ll go with it.
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen The Sadies – the first was when they blew the Waco Brothers off the stage (in a friendly manner) and they have just gotten better and better since then.
This night was great in its own right for a couple of reasons, both of which made up for pretty much knowing what they were going to do before they started.
They, the brothers Good, Dallas and Travis, seemed more at ease and having fun than ever before. That’s outstanding, you know, when a band is having fun playing the same show they’ve played a thousand times. And their fun is our fun.
Reason #2 is the rhythm section. The whole band is a rhythm section, but it is of double bassist Sean Dean and drummer Michael Belitsky I speak. They are great, they’ve always been great, but this time they were even greater and it felt like the brothers Good let them carry this thing even more tannin the past. It really felt like a band, a quartet.
They played the standard 40+ song two set night, this time with only one encore of five songs rather than ten, but not due to any lack of audience response. We’re all getting older I guess. I did miss the Syd Barrett Astronomy Dominy encore, though.
Their range of material is amazing, but they make it all sound like the Sadies rather than what ever it was before, George Jones, the Byrds, Bill Monroe or Arthur Lee. This is a good thing; some day there will be Sadies tribute bands that will probably make the songs sound like the original people who did them.
Anyway, it was terrific. I want to see them in a hall, where you can dance like a fool on an uncarpeted floor.

Review by Charley.