Was at The Shell in the Trump Marina Casino last nite to see Todd.
Although a true lover of Todd's music, unlike many of the other Todd Heads there, I haven't seen a Todd show in many years. In fact the last one I saw was when Todd and Kasim Sultan were doing their Utopia thing.
The show was great (despite the fact that the people sitting next to us were bombed out of their minds and insisted on signing/yelling the words to Todd's songs) and I was very impressed with the range and quality of Todd's voice. He really hasn't lost much after all these years and especially this was the end of the "Channel Surfing Tour".
The real story for me though was that at 6:30 (3 hours prior to show time) while picking up our tickets at the box office, Todd and Jessie (and probably John) walked by and went into the theater to start loosening up and tuning the instruments. I decided to meander in and see what happened. What happened was that no one bothered me (at least for about 30 minutes). No security stopped me. So there I was hanging out in the theater while Todd and his crew goofed off, talked about it being the end of the tour and the need to "stir the embers" while wondering where the hell the dressing room was. At one point Todd was trying to learn the right chords to a song on the piano and after numerous unsuccessful attempts Jesse came over to show him - at which point Todd blurted out "Oh, #&!@ it, I'm not gonna learn the song tonite anyway". Imagine the rush and goose bumps I got though when, while I stood there, Todd grabbed the guitar and roared into a dry run of "Common Man". Holy shit, it was unbelievable!
Anyway. The Show. It was as I said terrific! I didn't write the songs down so I can't go through that. Songs that stuck out though were:
"Born to Synthesize" (boy did they do a great job rapping that one up)
"Compassion"
"Zen Archer"
the goof they did on "Bang the Drum"
"Free, Male and 21"
"A Dream Goes on Forever"
"Common Man" (this time for everyone - not just me), and
Whatever song is about "pity---pity your brother", your sister and all living creatures" which was his last song and man was it filled with passion and heart!
All in all a great evening. And it certainly won't be another 20 years until my next Todd show - though I'm sure Todd will still be out working hard 20 years from now!