My wife and I had just checked in at the hotel and were waking over to the restaurant when I looked across the parking lot and saw Todd walking over to his bus. I said - Oh my God, there's Todd....look, after which she starts screaming TODD, TODD, TODD!!! Surprisingly, Todd looks over and gives us a very friendly wave, and we were waving back like old friends shouting "Hey, see you later at the show....." We were thrilled, and that puts us in great spirits for dinner. After a nice meal, we took the very short walk to the tent. Very intimate setting, although we were in the back rows behind the stage before it started to rotate. We saw lots of empy seats up front for the late arriving H&O crowd, so we looked at each other and said "screw this, let's head up front". We proceeded to move right to the front for Todd's show, and we are glad we did. He was with awesome tonight. Lots of energy, great sound, and the band was keeping it all together. I think Todd was looking for his fans and trying to play and feed off them - and I felt we were in that group he kept coming back to which felt really good. The only complaint was that the set was too short - slightly less than an hour. And despite compaints I heard from some about new material, including Todd actually who said he was sorry for ramming his new stuff up our butts, I thought the Liars songs were great. Doesn't hurt that I love the album, but the choices of Soul Brother, Sweet and Past were excellent for this band (sounded better than the Liars tour in Boston actually), and following that with Hello It's Me, a high energy Rock Love and Love is the Answer was perfect - I thought a good balance for TR fans and others too. Since I was one of the few with TR garb on, lots of people came up to me at the break and said "who was that guy?" Still surprises me....I just want to shake them and say "what rock have you crawled out of" ...but..... the point is TR made some new fans tonight.....One lady actully passed by and shouted that she was at the Stones the previous night at Fenway, but she like this show much better!!!! Sorry Mick.....
OK, back to our real seats for H&O, which was fun and dopey at times - but why not.....were waiting for the encore......Not to disappoint, the 30 minute encore with TR (very similar to the last summer tour with H&O in 2003) was really fun. I still laugh out loud thinking about Todd singing "she's a rich girl, and she's gone too far...blah blah...she can rely on her old man's money...etc" and yes it has now been recorded on CD (which I also bought but have not listened to yet).....priceless.......Todd was actually having fun with this, which I think shows his good nature, and so what the hell, so did we. Good crowd reaction for Can We Still Be Friend and I Saw the Light...and ending it with Love Train with the whole place standing and clapping was a very fitting end to a really fun night. Todd pats Daryl on the back and they're off....Thanks TODD and H&O for a fun time.
