Review of Cleveland Show

This was a big night my friends for a couple of aging TR fans from Cleveland. Me and lou and his lovely wife rebecca who met on the "I" finally met! All because of OH...well, we went to the show which was at the Tower Ampitheater in Cleveland right on the water. My short review of the venue was that the bathrooms were real and nice, which was a plus. The venue is essentially a huge tent with folding chairs underneath with lots of beer vendors and of course tee-shirt vendors. The show started right on the dot at 8 pm with TR coming out with acoustic guitar in hand and making sure that the sound was OK, trouble shooted a bit and then launched into Love of The Common Man followed by an acoustic version of Hammer In My Heart. He was then joined by a band (the H & O band) consisting of bass guitar, keyboards and drums and TR was playing "Foamy" his seafoam green P Project strat copy (learned this all from the DVD of the Power Trio, get it if you don't already have it). The tune was, surprisingly enough, Hit Me Like A Train and was a pretty powerful version! First awesome TR guitar solo of the night too! This was followed by Buffalo Grass and he did an absolutely screaming guitar solo on this one, the audience really was amping by this time too! Very good response these two numbers back to back. He then further surprises us with a just keys and him singing Parallel Lines with all the little hand gestures and everything! I almost cried...really a beautiful tune about limerance (unrequited love) which I am sure that many of the TR fan-atic ladies out there can relate to! So the audience response to this tune was unbelievably positive and then TR followed this with a little lecture about how great Cleveland audiences are something to the effect that, "no where else in the United States can I get away with playing obscure material like this and get such a good audience response." He also stated that he looks at tour itineraries for the Cleveland date because, for him, that is the pinnacle of the tour. He said the Cleveland has its own flavor and cosmopolitan feel and "in my most cosmopolitan way I will say 'Bon Jour Its Me..." and keeping singing Hello Its Me like a special little ballad to Cleveland and the Cleveland audience. He encouraged the audience to sing along during the refrains, which we all did, heck most of us were singing along already anyways! At the end he did this funny little mime (I use the word loosely here, wouldn't want to accuse Todd of resembling a mime...; ) ) thing with pretending he was calling on the telephone and saying "Hello Its Me." It was cute. The next song was Love Is The Answer of course during which he always looks like a preacher, going back and forth across the stage and testifying! Really awesome audience sing along too, most were standing and waving arms and such. The next song he picks up Foamy again and its Rock Love, really cranking version too! He had so much energy! Hopping around, screaming alot, jumping up and down and spinning like a Dervish and even doing a few little polka-like dance steps! It was at this point that I noticed he was wearing those same little black canvas deck shoes he always wears but with white socks!!! What a chucklehead! ; ) So, this was the last tune of the TR only show and I proceeded to suffer through H & O at a distance with beer(s) in hand. The most memorable moment of this portion of the concert for me was standing there with my buddy Matt watching two Cleveland cops smile at eachother when H & O launched into "Maneater." Too funny! TR joined H & O for the "encore" set of alternating TR and H & O tunes starting with Can We Still Be Friends then followed by Rich Girl (during this TR was in a rather camp fashion tossing his head from side to side) and then I Saw The Light. The next tune was Your Kiss Is On My List and during this TR in a very joking fashion went up to Darryl Hall and put his arm around him and leaned in to him when they sang "Your kiss is on my list.." It was too funny! All night the "you know what" jokes had been flying between me and my buddy Matt (and lou) about H & O and TR put the icing on the cake for that little theme!!! At least that was our interpretation of the "gesture." The last tune of the night was Hot Fun In The Summertime which was the encore to the "encore set." They had beach balls blown up tossed around the audience and at one point one beach ball went back on stage and TR picked it up and threw it at the drummer! When they introduced the band TR made the little "shark bite" hand gesture to the drummer too so perhaps the drummer was his party buddy for the tour, who knows? TR looked like he was having a good time, doing the guitar antics back to back and front to front with the other guitarist. It was pretty amazing! BUT what is most amazing is that lou (who had fought his way up front to attempt to pass a note to TR and lei him, to no avail) sees TR's lovely wife Michele in the audience right by him and he says hello and talks to her for a moment and dances along with her, of course! We didn't get to go backstage in spite of all our best efforts and lou telling the sob story about me losing my eyesight ala "there is this little girl who is with me who is losing her vision and her only wish is to see TR face to face!" This almost worked, had one of the ladies from backstage really sad and trying to help us. I, of course, am not little but am losing my eyesight so it is half the truth!!! Good try lou!! We had a wonderful time and are all relieved to know that me, lou and rebecca are all relatively normal people who love TR! There will hopefully be many more great shows to come! TODD IS GODD!!!!!