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The Ringo Starr All-Starr Band, SECC: Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow, Thu 23 Jun

Not so starry night for Ringo and his band
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The Ringo Starr All-Starr Band, SECC: Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow, Thu 23 Jun

'Is Ringo the best drummer in the world?', a reporter once asked John Lennon. 'He’s not even the best drummer in The Beatles,' Lennon replied. And neither is he a natural frontman. Certainly Starr doles out small servings of the mandatory patter during this Vegas-y best-of show but there’s something blank about it all, a hint of rictus in the grin. He hits the stage at 7.30 and departs, to the split-second, two hours later, without encores, his helicopter soon soaring over the venue on its way to Loch Lomond. Added to which, the All-Starr Band could’ve been done under the Trades Description Act. The bass player of Mr Mister? The drummer in Dave Lee Roth’s band? Stars? I had a deeper acquaintance with the lady selling programmes. Anyway, so it was that the terse, strategically-spaced Beatle hits were in interspersed with long interludes of big-haired 1980s Crockett and Tubbs power-pomp. I don’t think the three-quarters-full hall enjoyed it all very much. There was something ersatz and joyless about the show; it might have worked at a state fair in Idaho but not on a Thursday night in Glasgow at fifty quid a ticket. It was, indeed, a hardy day’s night.

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