They’re calling it Motor City Madness when Mitch Ryder and his Detroit Wheels meet James Montgomery Blues Band at 8 PM Thursday night, June 9 at 8 PM at the Kowloon – 948 Broadway (Route 1, North), Saugus, Massachusetts. This is being billed as the “Only New England appearance of the “Godfather of Blue-eyed Soul”…and I can go with that…the hits “Devil With a Blue Dress On”, “Good Golly Miss Molly”, “Sock It To Me Baby”, “Jenny Takes A Ride” and more will rock the venerable restaurant up on the hill of Route 1 North.
But there’s more to Mitch Ryder than the hits. This is a great entertainer…and a tremendous comic talent, believe it or not. At Vincent’s Nightclub (the old Chateau DeVille in Randolph), Ryder was hilarious with joke after joke, kind of like a stand-up Jack Nicholson. And these days he could be separated at birth with actor Nicholson, Mitch should actually play Jack in a film biopic.
You can search the web for my reviews on the AllMedia Guide of his classic albums – The Detroit Memphis Experiment – when Steve Cropper took over the production work from Bob Crewe and Mitch changed direction…there was no doubt about it when Detroit went to Tennessee and embraced the sound that Reverend Al Green worked so well.
In 1971 Mitch recorded with Bob Ezrin producing and what emerged was the most classic of albums, DETROIT featuring Steve Hunter, soon to be with Lou Reed and Alice Cooper. Hunter reinvented Lou Reed’s underground favorite, “Rock & Roll” (not the Zeppelin tune of the same name) and Mitch had a huge counter-culture buzz with that song on alternative AM and FM radio. Ryder’s popularity in Europe led to more releases in the 1980s and 1990s…this is an opportunity to see one of the greats in concert. Read the reviews and come out and play.
Kowloon
kowloonrestaurant.com
Phone #781-233-0077
$35 Reserved Seats Ticket
$70 VIP Ticket up front seatng and pre-show reception with Mitch Ryder and James Montgomery
Joe Viglione is the Chief Film Critic at TMRZoo.com. He was a film critic for Al Aronowitz’s The Blacklisted Journal, has written thousands of reviews and biographies for AllMovie.com, Allmusic.com and produces and hosts Visual Radio. Visual Radio is a fifteen year old variety show on cable TV which has interviewed John Lennon’s Uncle Charlie, Margaret Cho, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, Felix Cavaliere, Marty Balin, Bill Press and hundreds of other personalities.
