This unofficial site features his current and recent events and tours
Review of Review of Big Band 2007 - Hasselt, Belgium - 27th January 2007
There wasn't much else in Tony's calendar when this was announced and myself and three friends decided it would be nice to see Tony in Belgium. One of my friends decided she would drive us there, but due to a change in circumstances, she couldn't make it, but the rest of us decided to go anyway. I'd previously done some research into Hasselt as Tony had done a gig there before, but on that occasion I'd decided not to go. We decided to go by Eurostar, a Eurostar ticket to Brussels gives you onward travel to any station in Belgium, so we just had to find our way to Hasselt from Brussels. The Belgian Railways website was very helpful and I found we could get a direct train to Hasselt, but the timing would be quite tight between trains. We managed to navigate our way around Brussels Central Station and found the platform we needed. I had an inkling that our train split during the journey, but we got on the right part of the train and journeyed to Hasselt.
We met up with another friend from Holland and went for an explore of the town and something to eat. It was soon time to go out to the Ethias Arena. When we booked the tickets we were told we were in Block A, Row 1, but by the time we got our tickets they had changed the seating layout and we were in the balcony, to the side and in row 4. This was the furthest I have been from Tony ever, thank goodness for the optical zoom on my camera, otherwise the photos would have been ant like.
Local singer Sandrine - she was a Belgian Pop Idol finalist was up first. Tony was on second. He sang Too Close for Comfort, The Good Life , Just a Gigolo and Gold . Although this wasn't Tony's usual band for this type of song, Paul Moran was there playing the piano. He sounded excellent but was there for far too short a time. There are official photos from the event here - Tony's photos are numbers 16 - 28 and 74. There was an interval and Ali Campbell from UB40 was up next, he was good, but I would hardly have called his music Big Band, rather it was Reggae to a Big Band. Udo a Belgian X Factor winner was next, he was quite good. Chaka Khan was top of the bill, this was a disappointment as she seemed to have a throat infection or in the intervening years has lost the ability to sing as she was terrible only redeeming herself when singing I'm Every Woman' and didn't look anything like she did on the above poster as she seemed to be about five stone heavier. I was a bit surprised by the Big Band billing of this show as it was only Tony who was singing Big Band. We chatted with Sandra and Marianne from the fan club.
It would have been nice to see Tony after the show but we just couldn't find him and it wasn't the sort of place that had a stage door - huge places to drive your lorry in, but no stage door. We had another look around Hasselt the following morning and then it was back on the train and Eurostar to London. At Waterloo Station there is a huge advertising hoarding for Chicago and when we came back it was still advertising Ian Kelsey in the role of Billy Flynn. I didn't go home on the Sunday, but went to my friends' house, but more of this on my review of Chicago.