Even at age 69, Tom Jones still makes it rain panties. Dozens of undergarments bombarded the sex-obsessed singer at his concert Friday at the Riverside Theater, hurled by women of a certain age and women well beyond that certain age. The audience was sometimes caught in the crossfire, with ill-thrown underwear from the balcony landing on the heads of those on the ground floor.
Jones' bronze voice is still in fine form and he's still a deft dancer-you'd have to be not to slip on any of the panties scattered across the stage-though with his gray hair and slightly stocky frame, he more closely resembled Darrell Hammond's "Saturday Night Live" Sean Connery impersonation than the limber showman seen on his 1960s and '70s album covers. The overheated crowd didn't seem to mind. Their shrieks turned deafening when Jones opened his shirt, already unbuttoned past most of his ribs, to reveal, then tweak, a nipple.
"What type of show is this turning into?" Jones asked with feigned modesty as a chorus of women screamed for him to strip further.
There's a serious music lover hidden underneath Jones' kitschy sex-symbol veneer, and it came across in covers of songs by Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Withers and Willie Dixon, whose "300 Pounds of Joy" Jones refashioned as a more form-fitting "200 Pounds." He also included a generous helping of cuts from his latest album, 24 Hours, which, thanks to his fiery backing band, were as bombastic and funky as anything else he played.
By the end of the first set, Jones had already exhausted his major hits-"Delilah," "What's New, Pussycat," "She's a Lady," "Sex Bomb" and "It's Not Unusual"-setting the stage for an amiably loose, informal encore with a pair of covers that again put Jones' confident footwork (and his insatiable libido) on full display: Shocking Blue's "Venus" and Prince's "Kiss."
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Photo by CJ Foeckler
