Sedaka Fills Evening With Songwriting Hits
Neil Sedaka Sunday, Aug. 18, The Festival at Sandpoint
What looked like the largest crowd for any Festival at Sandpoint event this year showed up to hear Neil Sedaka close out the season on Sunday night.
Reserved seating sold out in advance, and there were plenty more concertgoers to fill the bleachers and cover the lawn.
Sedaka has a high, light voice that is pleasant enough to listen to, and he has enough experience to suavely sell a song. But I believe that most people did not go to hear Neil Sedaka the singer; they went to hear Neil Sedaka the songwriter.
The man does have a gift for penning pop songs. He has been churning out chart-toppers for nearly 40 years.
He had no trouble filling an hour with tunes that were all immediately recognizable.
Sedaka started off the set with his older stuff from the classic days of rock and roll: “Oh! Carol,” “Diary,” “Next Door To An Angel,” “Calendar Girl,” and “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.” There must have been more than a few in my section who were hanging out at the drive-in between ‘58 and ‘62; there were so many people singing along with these songs that I felt as if I was in the middle of the backup chorus.
Sliding into his hits from the ‘70s and ‘80s, Sedaka covered “Hungry Years,” “I Should Have Never Let You Go” and the powerful ballad “Solitaire.”
A couple of times I overheard the comment, “I didn’t know he wrote that!”
Sedaka is one of the quintessential didn’t-know-he-wrote-that tunesmiths, and he proved it by singing a couple of these, such as “Love Will Keep Us Together,” written for The Captain and Tennille.
Running comic commentary on the mosquitoes swamping the stage included the interjection, “They’re eating me alive,” in the middle of a song.
He had to skip a line in another spot after inhaling a bug. He quipped, “At least there’s no calories.” They must have been attracted to his purple suit.
Entomology and meteorology may be the downfall of The Festival at Sandpoint yet, but the festival is finding its eclectic niche in spite of the bugs and bad luck with unseasonable weather. Instead of going head-to-head with the huge venues, trying to outshine each other’s big-name stars, Sandpoint may do well with artists like Sedaka who appeal to an informed slice of the population.
The gospel-style “Good Times, Good Music, Good Friends” and his encore “Laughter in the Rain” could both serve well as subtitles for this summer’s version of The Festival at Sandpoint.
, DataTimes