merchandise was pretty cool.....several nice shirts....i'm still amazed at the cost of the concert shirt these days...not just at a styx show but any show......$30-35 is a little stiff but I bit the bullet and bought one anyway.
the merch table seemed to be doing good business.
the show........they started about 5-10 minutes late.......but the video stuff was really cool and then they launched into the grand illusion album. right out of the gate I was fairly impressed with the sound....the theatre didnt have a flat wall anywhere so the sound was getting gobbled up real well making things very clear. as they moved into fooling yourself out came chuck...i expected to see him but it was still cool he was there. they did a good job on those two but as a long time styx concert goer I was waiting patiently to hear "superstars". the moment arrived and it did not let me down. they nailed it! this version last night was MUCH better than any of the youtube versions I have seen thus far. Tommy hit all of his high notes very well and the harmony guitars were great.
Come sail away got the crowd going and they did a good job. miss america was a huge surprise as JY chose to sing this song more "normal" than I have maybe every heard him do it. It was closer to the record vocally than I ever remember and I was impressed with JY on this tune.
My next big surprise came on man in the wilderness....it was so powerful and I really enjoyed it quite a bit. castle walls was done spot on and gowan probably did better on this tune than I really expected him to...once again better than what I had seen on the internet. the grand finale was cool and by the end of the first set everybody was pretty pumped.
when they started pieces of eight and launched into great white hope I was pretty excited as great white hope is one of my favorite styx songs. they did a good job overall but this was JY's weakest vocal of th enight....the first parts of the verse he sounds great but on the second parts of the verse and the choruses he simply just cannot hit those notes anymore and the song suffered a bit from that.
next came the single biggest surprise of the night...I'm OK blew the roof off the top of the place for me and I was very pleased with how this song turned out. gowan may have done better on this tune than any of the other stuff that they are not used to performing. the sound and mix was perfect and Tommy nailed one of my favorite solos note for note inlcuding the great pinch harmonics.
sing for the day was near perfection and I was surprised and how tightly they did this song....great performance.
next big surprise for me was how well JY did on lords of the rings.....he sang it real well....not to over the top and put some good effort into it....and he sounded fantastic. this has always been a song that I have loved so getting to hear such a great version was alot of fun. the only time JY bobbled was in the last chorus where he hits the big "so let's sing"....he struggled a bit on that one line but otherwise a good job.
blue collar man was a huge crowd pleaser and of all the times I have seen them this may have been one of the best versions of BCM I have seen them do.
queen of spades rocked but gowan did not do the intro all that well vocally....once the song got rocking he sounded fine but the intro was not good and certainly adds fuel to the fires of the gowan haters out there!
renegade was done well and crowd loved it.
next was pieces of eight and this is really the only song that is sort of cringe worthy to hear gowan sing....he does the best he can but this song is signature dennis that gowan just cant do justice.....once again when the song kicks into the choruses he sounds fine but the verses were OK at best.
aku-aku for me was a great way to close the second set and my only complaint here was that tommy's electric 12 string was too low in the mix.
the encore was great for the crowd everybody really got into I am the walrus and they did a smoking version of it. the shocker to me was how well too much time on my hands went over as the closer....i had my doubts about this being the last song but I was wrong....the crowd went nuts and everybody left with on a high note.
overall great show from my persepctive.....the band was tight and vocally they did a wonderful job with the exceptions I have pointed out above. the palace seats about 2800 and there were roughly 1800-2000 people there...overall the crowd was pumped.
I am going to see them again at the ryman in nashville on thursday as well!!!
It's easy to say what you want when you are hiding behind a screen.
