I’m no fan of Piet Levy, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s music critic. Don’t think he’d recognize good music if an album was shattered over his head.

His negative review last night of Rod Stewart began:

Finally, for the first time since 2019, Summerfest had something for the boomers Thursday night on its largest stage, the American Family Insurance Amphitheater.

Unfortunately it was Rod Stewart. 

The two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s vocals were thin and strained when he last played Milwaukee 10 years ago — and they were even more inconsistent Thursday. 

Wonder if Levy will be writing for any newspaper when he’s 77.

Before this week’s oldie here’s an interesting read from humor columnist Danny Tyree about attending live concerts. Here’s just a portion:

Believe it or not, my wife and I haven’t attended a concert in nearly 25 years.

(Elton John’s January 1998 appearance at Nashville Arena was our last outing.)

I realize such an admission strikes a discordant note with most “normal” people. “Don’t you want to be able to say that you saw (fill in the blank) in person?”

Get serious. Most of the applause at concerts is lavished upon songs celebrating substance abuse, promiscuity, adultery or anti-establishment violence. If you can approve the other naughtiness, why not tell a few white lies about concerts you didn’t, technically, attend? (“Yeah, Garth called us onstage. But the CIA made the TV crews delete the video; so, alas, there’s no record of it. Yeah, that’s the ticket.”)

Here’s the entire column.

Throughout his tour Stewart has been ending his setlist with a song he did with the group Faces in late 1971.