"MY NEW CD is available in your local store," says Neil Sedaka when it comes time to do his salesman bit, "and on neilsedaka.com, on Amazon, iTunes…" He sighs and shakes his head ruefully. "It's a new world." The murmur from the 70-year-old's simila
rly-aged audience suggests that they agree.
Sedaka is an anachronism, an old-style entertainer from a different era. Yet watching the powder blue and canary yellow-jacketed (one for each half of the show) septuagenarian telling genial stories from behind his grand piano and then standing up for a few hesitant but crowd-pleasing dance steps, it's easy to mistake him for the product of a more naive and less business-focused age. That's nonsense, of course; Sedaka's late-50s to early-70s heyday incorporated many years as a songwriter on the Brill Building production line, and an essential trait for maintaining such a career is to be a relentlessly high-quality pop songwriter.
Hearing him wind his way through a full two-and-a-half-hour show (with interval) is to realise this. Maintaining a comforting high pitch to his voice and a genial, loveable line in conversation, his 46-year marriage to Leba and his three grandchildren being favourite topics, Sedaka is backed only by his own piano and sometimes just a backing tape. Yet the crisply-realised storytelling of his best tracks is compelling. Breaking Up Is Hard To Do appears in both its ballad and "rock 'n' roll" formats (Sedaka seems to use the latter description in reference to pop), there's Rosemary Blue, The Queen of 1964 and the stunning existential apoplexy wrapped up as crooner's gold of The Hungry Years.
"I knew Michael Jackson," noted Sedaka at his most sombre, obviously affected by the news of the day, "and he told me this was his favourite song." The song is the majestic set highlight, Laughter in the Rain; the story, quite believable.
