TRAIN Keeps Chugging at Tanglewood
Wallflowers Shared the Stage
By: Philip Kampe and Maria Reveley - Aug 30, 2014
Pat Monahan, lead singer of the band TRAIN, showed the cheering audience at Tanglewood what a 45 year old, ex-lead singer of a Led Zeppelin tribute band, could do to a crowd full of tweenage girls, their parents and grandparents.
Monahan is a poster boy of social media, commandeering smartphones, and taking well over fifty selfies, with fans phones, while on stage, during the hour and a half set.
The opening song, ‘Calling All Angels’ got the crowd on their feet.
He is a true showman who shares his talent to all that appreciate his positive personality and marketing skills. As a veteran stage personality, Monahan used the ‘popular classic crowd pleasing trick’ of giving, or should we say, throwing TRAIN t-shirts to the audience.
I stopped counting at twenty and started again at twenty-one, as marketer Monahan took off his t-shirt and handed it to a young girl at the stage perimeter.
Classic TRAIN songs were mixed with songs from the upcoming new album, titled ‘Bulletproof Picasso’. The crowd pleasers that led to standing ovations included their super-hit, ‘Hey Soul Sister’, intertwined with ‘Save Me San Francisco’. ‘Drive-By’ and ‘Drops of Jupiter’.
The Led Zeppelin focused band tore the house down with a perfect rendition of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page’s ‘What Is And Never Should Be’. As a veteran concert fan, the song reminded me of when the real Led Zeppelin played their version at the Saenger Theater in New Orleans, many moons ago when when I was a tweenager.
Opening act, the Wallflowers, led by front man, Jakob Dylan (Bob’s son) played a masterful fifty minute set featuring songs from their hit albums, ‘Sleepwalker’ and ‘One Headlight’. Monahan joined the Wallflowers and was featured on ‘Sixth Avenue Heartache’.
Overall, the evening was a collective success. Jakob Dylan and the Wallflowers are on the verge of International success, once again.
TRAIN keeps chugging along.
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