At Tom Jones’ show at the House of Blues Tuesday night, a bartender said security didn’t work as hard as they did that night when working heavy metal shows. They were constantly hunting for cameras that had been smuggled past the “No Cameras” signs, fishing out women who were passing out, and at one point stopped three women in their 40s (I estimate) from bumrushing the stage. “At metal shows, they just stop people from passing out.”

The show was better than it had to be, and had some pleasant idiosyncrasy. He got his start as an R&B singer, so you could see his logic for covering Howlin’ Wolf’s “200 Pounds of Heavenly Joy” and Ashton, Gardner and Dyke’s “Resurrection Shuffle,” but they were more obscure than anything I saw Wayne Newton do, and I doubt many in his audience knew the songs.

The latter was part of the most musically satisfying part of the show – the encore. At that point, he followed the aesthetic path that the Art of Noise’s “Kiss” pointed out. “Resurrection Shuffle,” “Sex Bomb” and “Kiss” were percussion-heavy, dense and insistent. The versions weren’t straight out of the “Kiss” playbook – not nearly as tech-oriented – but they marked a clear break from the regular set, which presented his hits played the way the audience expected. “She’s a Lady” still sounded great, but “What’s New Pussycat,” “Help Yourself” and “It’s Not Unusual” sounded dated.

But the audience was the show: suburban, middle-aged couples and/or women enjoying a night away their real lives. That meant colorful drinks, doubles, and severely diminished senses of boundaries. Two women shouted down the bar to each other, and a friend reported that a woman was showing off personal scars in the bathroom. I rarely see a show that I want to see again the next night, but I felt bad that I’d missed the first night of the show and, because of the audience, I’d love to have seen Jones again the next night and the next night and the next night.