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Styx Concert Review, Austin, TX 11/11/2012

My history with Styx (my Styxtory? Sorry…) isn’t really so deep and meaningful like it is with a lot of bands I see and review here, but I’ve always liked them. To be honest, I think I only owned one of their greatest hits compilations and that wasn’t until the late 90s. Maybe I owned Paradise Theater at some point, too. I don’t really remember. I also owned Tommy Shaw’s Girls With Guns CD which was quite good. They’ve been to Austin a few times since I lived here but I never had the hankering to go. When this show was announced I decided to pull the trigger. Tickets were reasonable and it was at one of my favorite venues, The Moody Theater.

One thing I do remember is that around 1981, Paradise Theater was plastered on the airwaves and you couldn’t get away from it. I didn’t consider it a bad thing. As many of you faithful readers may know, my older brother, Robert (RIP), was a huge influence on me musically and he never got into Styx and I followed suit as a little kid who watched his every move musically. When Paradise came out, I was in 5^th grade and did quite enjoy what I heard from the album like Rockin’ The Paradise, Too Much Time On My Hands, Snowblind and especially Best of Times. I think it was Deyoung’s sappy and whimpy vocals which always seemed to turn me off for the most part. And their follow-up album, Kilroy Was Here, had the megahit Mr. Roboto. Who didn’t get forced to like it?

Right after buying tickets, I had asked my friend Johnette if she wanted to go and she instantly said yes. She’s a bit younger but was familiar with much of Styx’s greatest hits thanks to family members. Concert day came and we met downtown and walked to the venue. I have to say it was such a beautiful night to walk downtown in this fair city and with this fair maiden!

We got to the venue, grabbed a beer and ran into some friends there including Rick Colaluca (and his girlfriend Constance) from Watchtower, who is one of my favorite drummers and played in one of my favorite bands. We then went to our seats in the balcony, front row center of course!

Styx started a few minutes after 8PM and they went right into Blue Collar Man and then The Grand Illusion. They superbly rolled through many of their live standards like Too Much Time on My Hands, Lady, Lorelei etc. I will just go ahead and say that at their ages, it was quite nice to see how well Tommy Shaw and James “JY” Young could still belt out the high notes effortlessly. I imagine that in-ear monitors have helped a lot of our ageing rockers in recent years, but still, these guys sounded great. Lawrence McGowan, who replaced Dennis DeYoung several years ago does an incredible job sounding like Dennis and also playing the keyboards, although he is extremely showy with the spinning keyboard. Having never seen wither guitar player live, I was quite impressed with their skills. Both guys are incredibly talented. Bassist Ricky Phillips looked like he was spot on, unfortunately I really couldn’t hear much bass. His backing vocals were stellar. Doing some research I see that he played in Bad English and The Babys. Drummer Todd Sucherman was great to watch. He did a few things here and there that just made me say, “wow!” Apparently both he and Ricky make Austin their home these days.

A pleasant surprise came right before Fooling Yourself when they brought founding member Chuck Ponazzo on stage to play bass. He came back out for Come Sail Away and Rockin’ The Paradise.

I have to say that the highlight tracks for me were Pieces of Eight, Castle Walls, Crystal Ball and Man In The Wilderness. Had Best of Times been played, I think I would have shed a tear. It’s definitely one of those “time and place” kind of songs for me.

Overall it was a great show and definitely opened the door for me to go see them again. I really wish I hadn’t waited so long as their live performance was really good, although some of the stage choreography was a tad goofy. Again, their voices were utterly amazing. We both had a wonderful time and ended the night at a club with some good friends and more great music.

Life is good.

Edit this setlist | More Styx setlists

: The last goodbye.

Written by The Metal Files

November 12, 2012 at 11:16 am

Posted in 2012, acl live, austin, concert reviews, concerts, james jy young, moody theater, styx, tommy shaw

Tagged with concert reviews, styx

Bob Mould Concert Review, Austin, TX 11/1/2012

Cheap Trick Concert Review, Austin, TX 7/29/12

with 2 comments

Let’s face facts. I was never really a big Cheap Trick fan although at some point or another I owned their debut album and Dream Police. It’s not that I didn’t like them, to be honest, I think I’ve liked every song I have ever heard by them. But for whatever reason I just never got in to them. I believe part of that was due to my brother Robert’s lack of interest in them in 70s and I pretty much drew my musical tastes in those days from what he fed to me. However I do remember myaunts Diane and Debbie liking them but we only saw them once a year when we’d visit Pennsylvania.

I saw Cheap Trick one time before in 1999 at the Hampton Bay Days Festival but I was pretty far back in the crowd and couldn’t really grasp the energy. I also don’t remember the crowd being that excited either. When tickets went on sale for last night’s show at The Moody Theater / ACL Live, I had to get tickets for it. That venue is awesome and has been bringing in some great shows so far.

In the early 2000s, I was playing in a band called The Renegades of Sluts (this is not a typo) and we did She’s Tight and Hello/Goodnight in our set sometimes. Good fun. I’ve always loved She’s Tight and was hoping we’d get to hear it. Perusing recent setlists for Cheap Trick’s Global Warming Tour. Last night was an off night for them while on tour with Aerosmith and they played Dallas the night before.

When I can, I try to buy extra tickets to shows. Sometimes to resell for profit and sometimes just to go ahead and get them on presale when maybe a friend isn’t able to do it at the time. I bought 2 for this show and ended up asking my dear friend Molly to come with me a few weeks ago. Perfect!

We get to the show and the opener is on. I had no interest in seeing them after listening to a few tracks on Youtube earlier in the day. Not my bag at all. We hung around the lounge until they were finished. Signs were posted around the venue stating that Cheap Trick would be on at 9. We went and found our seats and were getting excited for the show. Molly wanted to hear Southern Girls but they ended up not playing it. I did get to hear She’s Tight, though.

The lights go down right at 9 am the band hits the stage opening with Clock Strikes Ten. Zander was wearing a band leader type uniform and hat for most of the show. Nielsen is dressed like he always dresses. I don’t know what Peterssen was dressed like, but it was out there. He had an Elton John thing going for sure. Unfortunately Bun E. Carlos no longer tours with the band, but Rick’s son, Daxx, has been handling the live duties for the last 2 years and did a fine job.

They played a good set and the highlights for me were certainly She’s Tight, Oh Candy, The Flame (always loved this song), I Know What I Want and Borderline. I was a bit surprised as to how many songs I recognized. The great thing about their music is that every song is right around 3 minutes long, old rock and roll style. The Beatles influence on them is overt and it’s a wonder I even like them due my my disdain for the Beatles.

Robin’s voice started a wee bit rough but got stronger and stronger as the night went on. In The Flame, he nailed the high note at the end. I was truly shocked. He still has a lot of power in his singing. While I’ve never looked at Rick as a stellar player, he’s certainly solid and entertaining. He jumps around a lot for a man who is 65. Tom Peterssen apparently invented the 12-string bass and he used a few different ones all night. Of course Rick used about a dozen different guitars and an 8-string bass for one song. The whole band was really good in general.

I did notice from our balcony set that there was a piece of paper taped to the floor in front of Zander’s mic that said “AUSTIN TEXAS”. Rick wasn’t sure where he had played last night as he stated, “Where did we play last night? Atlanta?” Funny. But I guess when you’re touring that much, things get blurry. What a wonderful problem to have, eh?

During Surrender, Rick grabbed the hand of a little kid with a mohawk and yanked him on stage. They handed him a ton of guitar picks and he was tossing them out to the crowd. He also helped to sing the song with Robin and knew all of the words. It was pretty neat thing to see.

After Surrender, they left the stage. After about 2 minutes they came back on and played 3 more songs: Dream Police, Gonna Raise Hell and Goodnight.

It was a great show and hopefully I’ll have another chance to see them again. I also wish I would have taken the opportunities to have seen them more in the 80s and 90s. Such is life.

One thing I thought was weird was that during the main part of the set, security made the people in the floor seats stay at their seats, no one was allowed at the stage at all. They were hardcore about it. If you don’t want people rushing the stage at a rock show, put up a barricade. Easy. I’ve seen them used at this venue before (Megadeth anyone?). After the encore started, everyone rushed the stage and security didn’t try to gain control again. I also noticed that the venue was barely 3/4 full, which I found a bit surprising seeing that the place only holds a few thousand folks. I guess they’re just not that popular here.

Go see them if you get a chance, you won’t be disappointed.