Last night, Gwen Stefani kicked off the summer concert series at the Nikon Theater at Jones Beach. I half expected someone in the tour’s marketing team to place little stickers over those signs changing it to the “Akon Theater at Jones Beach” for the night since he was one of her opening acts, but that didn’t happen.
She began with The Sweet Escape and Akon came out and sang his essential “woo hoo, yee hoo” lines. Then she spent about 90 minutes doing song after song from her two solo albums and talking about her baby Kingston who turns one this Friday.
I liked the show. I liked everything she did. It was probably similar to going to a Madonna concert. I’m just a little disappointed that it wasn’t the “Gwen Stefani Greatest Hits” show with eight or ten No Doubt songs and Moby’s South Side thrown in.
If she came out and did three No Doubt songs in her encore I would have been thrilled. Spiderwebs, Just a Girl, Hey Baby, Don’t Speak, New, Ex-Girlfriend, It’s My Life, Hella Good, Underneath It All, Excuse Me Mr. — anything.
She did repeatedly thank the crowd for indulging her dance album phase and told us that the next album she was doing would be with No Doubt — which was answered with insane cheering. To be fair, many solo artists don’t play their band’s material. Phil Collins figured that if you wanted to hear Genesis songs you’d go to a Genesis show.
Oh well. It was still a ton of fun to see the wardrobe changes and watch all of the solo Gwen songs, but now I’ll know to not miss the next No Doubt tour.
Brian Alvey 