antimusic.com: Quick Flicks: Simply Red - Live at Montreux 2003 Review

Simply Red - Live at Montreux 2003

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A couple of years ago Simply Red front man Mick Hucknall decided that the band had run its course and took his group on one last tour that included a Sydney, Australia stop where the show was committed to film. The musicianship, song selection and farewell emotion of that show, released as 2010 Farewell, pretty much makes it the definitive Simply Red concert film. Live at Montreux though gives a snapshot of where the band was seven years earlier; no thought of a permanent retirement was on their minds but still they left all they had on the stage. Hucknall has the crowd eating out of his hand from the opening strains of "Sad Old Red" all the way through to favorites like "The Right Thing," "Holding Back the Years" (performed by Mick without the band) and "Money's Too Tight to Mention." The long set also includes a couple of sterling covers: a take on Gregory Isaacs' sexy reggae "Night Nurse" and a soulful reading of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes' "You Make Me Feel Brand New."

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