Happy Birthday (July 5) to Huey Lewis, who turns 69 today. I saw them play the Pier in NYC back in 1984, and it was an eye-opening concert for impressionable young me. A meat-and-potatoes band? Sure. Great showmen? Absolutely. Their biggest album, Sports, was blowing up that summer and they were the hottest thing around. The New York show is always a high-pressure situation because the city is the heart of the music industry and bands have to deliver to impress the suits. Both factors meant that the band pulled out the stops and delivered the goods over and over and over again that night, to the point that they had to do three encores, the last of which was clearly not planned for. It was a stellar show, not only musically, but with the stage patter, and even the choreography, such as when Huey on harmonica and the saxophonist each ran in mid-song from opposite sides of the stage, dropping to their knees so that they wound up sliding to meet in the center of the stage, playing the song’s riff in harmony together. You just don’t see that kind of showmanship anymore, and while you can say it’s corny, if you see it in the right setting, it takes a good song and pushes it over the edge into the realm of greatness. They were a red hot band giving it everything they had in the middle of a tour that was making their years of hard work pay off and you just wound up rooting for them throughout the night. I saw them 6-7 years later, and again maybe 5 years ago, and the bud had long since fallen off the rose, but for that indelible moment in 1984, they were the right band at the right time.
