Next surprise: I thought I figured out from the Sun Theater's website that our seats were second row, just to Todd's left. But we were escorted to the mirror-image seats, directly in front of the PA, Kasim's output, etc. As a result, we significantly less of Todd's guitar than we would have liked, and much of what we heard was pretty mushy.
No opening act. Todd comes out around 8:20 PM, and comments on how empty the room is.
Towards the end of the set, Kasim tripped on his cable and fell flat on his back. Coming out to the encore, Todd says to Kasim, who is walking with evident stiffness, "Okay, Pap, what are you in the mood for?" Everyone's laughing but Kasim, who manages a weak smile He was somewhat doubled over, and limping in obvious pain, as the show ended. Let's all hope it's not serious.
One good PatroNet crack out of Todd: He announced he was about to do a new song which would be on the CD to be in stores in a couple of days, unless you have already received it as a subscriber to PatroNet, "which is how I am able to make music these days". One person cheers. Todd says something like, "There's one subscriber who feels compelled to take a bow. Pride of ownership, I suppose."
Now, to the music (which is the point, right, Pat?). I'll let others post the set list, which doesn't vary much from what you've seen from the other shows. So these are out-of-order and random:
I have to confess that, as I've listened to it more over the past 5 days, Buffalo Grass has, well, wrapped itself around my brain, and live it was tight.
I had never heard Couldn't I Just Tell You with drums in sync with the rest of the song --- what a concept! And a treat for us oldsters (as was Open My Eyes).
Even Todd knows that Bang The Uke is lame by now, and gives the rap about being required to learn a Hawaiian song "for the benefit of the half a dozen or so people here who don't know this already." (For you gearheads out there: Todd explains that his is a baritone uke, which is bigger than the standard-issue uke by a whopping six inches.)
Cliché, solo and acoustic ("the rest of the band get a mandatory union break"), is --- and will always be, for me --- magic.
Todd stopped and restarted Hit Me Like A Train, saying "we don't play this very often which is why it was SO FREAKING FAST" (while glaring at Trey). Todd also yelled back at Trey complaining about the too-fast tempo of Temporary Sanity. Funny --- both of those songs were started off by Kasim, not Trey, but it was Trey that got the tongue-lashing both times. We can all speculate what that's about.
Todd wails on gee-tar, I'll say for the guy --- too bad we missed so much of it due to seat location and mix. Strong vocals, very tight harmonies for the most part.
With Ringo and his All-Starrs playing the same venue tonight, we were speculating if any All-Starrs might walk on. We decided Eric Carmen was probably going to skip the chance.
"From Berlin to San Francisco, from Anaheim to Tokyo"
--- Barry Schlom
