We took our 11-year old twins to the brand new Dallas HOB last night. It was their first "real" Todd concert, after seeing a little bit of him with the New Cars at the Nokia Theater last year, from really far away (they actually fell asleep midway through that set after sitting through the entire Blondie session). Last night they were able to experience Todd up close, front and center, courtesy of some very nice ladies and long time fans in the front row. The highlights for them definitely were "Soul Brother" (their favoritest song) and catching a souvenir pick. They weren't the only youngsters we saw in the crowd, however. And Todd definitely took notice when he made a funny comment about the Dallas HOB's policy of letting kids into such a venue. But based on the extraordinary amount of head-banging he did right above the kids' heads, we could only surmise that he wanted to make sure this was to be a rock'n'roll encounter they would not soon forget.
There were some minor hiccups here and there, but none too obvious to the point of distraction. The band did a nice job of recovering when things got out of sync, and Todd's voice was in great form. Jesse and Kaz did an excellent job on backup vocals in addition to their rock solid guitaring, while Urbano lay down a pretty animated groove. The sound mix was loud but not too muddy, at least from where we were standing. But the star of the evening definitely was Foamy, who was put through a thorough workout by OH last night. And we die-hard heavy-metal kids couldn't have been happier for that.
