On Friday, Niki and I saw Foreigner and Styx at Jones Beach. It was our one last date night before starting 9 days of CodeJam.
Foreigner was great. I was looking forward to the scalding saxophone in Urgent and for some reason excited about hearing Dirty White Boy. DWB was okay, but a bunch of other songs were more memorable, especially Juke Box Hero. They have added Led Zeppelin offspring Jason Bonham on drums. The only song I would have wanted to hear but didn't was Blue Morning, Blue Day.
Styx was one of the bands we'll be seeing this summer that has a replacement for a missing key member. Chicago has a bass-playing Peter Cetera soundalike and Styx has a Dennis DeYoung clone.
I had seen Tommy Shaw open for Rush like 40 years ago, so I had already heard the best of Styx live: Blue Collar Man, Renegade and Too Much Time on My Hands. This time around I got to hear Lady, Grand Illusion and Come Sail Away. Niki reminded me that she met Tommy Shaw and his Damn Yankees when she worked in radio years ago and said that although he is not very tall, his new goatee makes up for it all and hides the fact that he's 52 years old. Looking up his age, I found out that he's one more person with a September 11 birthday.
I had read that they had a recent radio hit with their cover of Oingo Boingo's I Am The Walrus -- I kid, I kid -- and although I hadn't heard it before it was fantastic live.
It rained the whole way there. It didn't rain a drop during the shows. It rained and was foggy the whole way home. It was a perfect night.
[Update] I had read that Lou Gramm hadn't been singing with Foreigner over the last few years, but I didn't notice any difference in the material so I just figured he was back with the band. Not so. We listened to Kelly Hansen sing all night long and had no idea it wasn't Midnight Lou up there. Nice work.
GrimJack
EZ Street
Jon Sable, Freelance
Comments (3)
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Niki Alvey 2076 days ago
Well, Journey is playing the night before Victor's Baptism so unless you are planning on leaving me with all our relatives and heading to the concert on your own, you are going to miss it :).
Mike 2080 days ago
You should round that out with a visit to the Def Leppard/Journey tour -- Journey has a Steve Perry soundalike who's pretty uncanny. Don't ask me how I know these things.
Manuel 2075 days ago
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