Former The Babys and Bad English front man John Waite hasn’t paid numerous visits to these shores in his 30 year plus career so when news broke that he was heading out on tour to treat his loyal fan base to a selection of tunes from albums he recorded with the former 2 acts as well as songs from his 9 solo studio offerings, we kept our eyes peeled for a Belgian date. And much to my delight mister Waite’s tour schedule indeed included a stopover in Belgium, more precisely on June the 6th at the Spirit of 66 in Verviers.

To be honest I didn’t know what number of people would turn out to witness this gig but I needn’t have worried cause the club was packed upon arrival some 15 minutes before the designated show time.

It took however some 30 minutes before John and band took the stage and kicked things into gear with the first Bad English tune of the evening, “Best Of What I Got”. Two more Bad English tunes followed later in the set namely the awesome “Time Stood Still” and my absolute favourite “When I See You Smile”. One thing that immediately struck me, apart from the sound problems that popped up on several occasions during the evening and the feeling that the guys yet had to gel as a unit, was the stripped down feeling of these particular cuts due to the absence of an ivory tickler. Having been exposed for some 2 decades to the full on sound of the original versions, it felt kinda weird to hear these songs as they were presented tonight.

The combo delivered a regular set of some 75 minutes that included “Change”, “In Dreams”, “Mr. Wonderful”, “Everytime I Think Of You”, a rockin‘ “Head First” and “Encircled”. Somewhere in the middle John strapped on an acoustic guitar to bring us a couple of tracks (e.g. “Blue Bird Café”) he wrote during his stay in Nashville but while these are no doubt beautiful tunes, they slowed down the gig a bit too much in my humble opinion.
That however didn’t change the fact that John’s voice was in superb shape having lost nothing off its original strength and timbre. He may lack some front man qualities but he more than made up for that with his superb vocals.

Those present clearly enjoyed what they were seeing and hearing and gave John and band a big round of applause after each song and when they left the stage once the first part was finished, they were called back (very loudly if I may add) not once but twice. The first 2 encores were the US smash hit “Missing You” and a rousing version of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock N Roll” that wiped anyone’s doubt (if there was any) about the power of John’s voice clean of the table. They finished things off with “Isn’t It Time” after which we all agreed that it was indeed time to head to the car for a 2 hour plus drive to Bruges.

All in all I can say that I’m most happy to have witnessed one of my absolute favourite vocalists of the AOR/melodic rock genre but at the same time not all my expectations were met. Good gig but not awesome.