'"Axelle Red? No problem! Just buy a pair of binoculars and get a really close look at her." The Dutch-language hawkers gathered around the entrance to the Antwerp Sportpaleis on Saturday night were doing a brisk trade, and disappeared long before the actual performance started. Nevertheless, the revue which the female singer from Limburg worked through soon afterwards together with her soul heroes turned out to be one of the best performances ever given in the Bunker of Poor Taste, as the Antwerp Sportpaleis is known.

Generally speaking, the Sportpaleis only opens its doors to events in which form is more important than content. The tickets for the Night of the Proms concerts for example are already sold out before the names of the artists performing have been released, and the Diamond Awards are mainly directed at those who like absolutely anything, as long as they can sing along. The idea behind The Soul of Axelle Red was therefore infinitely more appealing. Miss Sensuality, who has never made a secret of the fact that she is very much influenced by the soul artists of the sixties and seventies who released records on Stax and Atlantic, decided it was high time to introduce some of them live to her own fans, so that they could discover for themselves where their idol gets it all from.

The concert started off with a lengthy speech from Axelle herself in which, amongst other things, she just happened to mention that Isaac Hayes, who had been billed to make an appearance, had decided to shy off at the last minute. Wilson Pickett on the other hand was there, and was the only artist who'd brought along his own band. What should have been an asset, turned out to be the reverse. In the first place it took an age for the man to finally appear on stage, and when he did, the legend of soul pissed off the audience by telling them, "We don't have a lot of time today, so we're going to keep things short." He then invited a few of the audience onto the stage, had members of his band give lengthy solos, and barely gave anyone the pleasure of hearing his own — phenomenal — voice. Most artists who made hit after hit in the sixties would love to perform, but can't any more. With Wilson Pickett it was the other way around, but he seemed determined to keep this to himself.

After the interval, during which we were told that radio Donna added spice to our life and that yet another new Volkswagen was on its way, it was time for Axelle's own soul revue. With Isaac Hayes' fantastic band acting as musical anchor the sound was very tight, and every now and then they were joined by a Belgian string section. The first guest artist, Ann Peebles, was a sort of Tina Turner minus wig. Her raw, rough rendition of 'I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down' and the immortal 'I Can't Stand The Rain', really did bring the 'playhouse' down. Next on was a figure we all know… none other than Percy! His rendering of his golden classic 'When A Man Loves A Woman', was as heart-wrenchingly beautiful as a few lifetimes ago.

In between, Axelle sang a duet with guitar-player Clarence Carter, as well as forcefully covering numbers by Bill Withers, Aretha Franklin or Otis Redding to whom the concert was dedicated. Living legends followed each other in quick succession. In spite of their years, both Eddie Floyd ('Knock On Wood', 'Raise your Hand') and Sam Moore ('Hold On I'm Coming') seemed not to have lost their great voices and had the audience in the palms of their hands. Even the fact that Floyd was so incredibly happy 'to be back in Brussels' could not spoil the fun.

By the time the finale came along, a drawn out version of the Sam & Dave classic 'Soul Man', everyone had forgotten the fact that there had been neither sight nor sound of Mavis Staple, introduced earlier on in the show. For a couple of hours the Sportpaleis, well known for its lack of atmosphere and poor design, had acquired the intimacy of a cosy living room, with even the acoustics leaving hardly anything to be desired. In short, miracles do exist. They are black, are able to sing and are listed in Axelle Red's private telephone book.
De Morgen — 16/11/98