Florence Ky Show, Band stumbling with Railo but still had fun energy!! Options

[PurdueSteve]

I went to the Florence, Ky show last night, which was basically a Cincinnatti show.

Collective Soul did their thing, pretty much the same as all of last year's Triple Play shows.

Blues Traveler was OK, I personally think they are the weakest of the three and that they should have opened instead of Collective Soul. They did play a cover of "Devil Went Down to Georgia" which was pretty cool.

Live took the stage kinda late, due to BT taking the stage late on account of what appeared to be a technical difficulty. Live didn't shorten the set list though. I didn't bother taking note of the whole set list cause there are songs that will always be played. Songs of note I would say were:

The Distance
Turn My Head
Simple Creed
Shit Town

The rest were songs that you expect.

Railo is indeed back and I think he disrupted the band quite a bit. There were several points in the show that Ed would go back and say something to him between songs, and there were a few occasions that you could clearly see that he disrupted the song's flow. Ed stumbled the lyrics and lost his place on a few songs, one of which was "I walk the line". Luckily I didn't hear Railo's keyboard that much. I think they are experimenting and had him intentionally turned down. His presence was strong on "The River", which in my opinion, really makes the song even more pop-like.

Even though Ed lost the lyrics on a few songs, seemingly lost the rythm of his strumming w/ Adam on Turn My Head, had a struggling voice [particularly the high notes on Distance], he still managed to keep the energy high and looked like he was having alot of fun. For me, this was my best show since the Riveria in March of last year.

Ed played a solo during Shit Town and was suprisingly better at guitar than I thought he was. That was a cool thing to see. He also used the megaphone during LJ and he did NOT take his shirt off, although I think there was only 1 button left by the end of the show still buttoned up.

I got backstage to the aftershow but didn't get to talk much with the guys. Most of the people there seemed to be lucky fans that won passes from the Radio and had stuff from the Merch booth to sign. I mentioned to Ed that I was looking forward to the new DVD and hopefully some new material on it as a single and that seemed to get his attention a little, at least as identifying me as a strong fan that follows the band. He told me the DVD footage turned out great and that there won't be any new material that directly comes with the DVD but there will be some associated content released in accordance with the DVD. He said the details were still being ironed out. At that point the tour manager was rounding them up to leave, there were only out for about 5 minutes or so. I wanted to speak with Railo but talking to the other guys was more important.

I snuck my DSLR camera into the venue [stupid rules] but got busted late into BTs set so I didn't have a chance to get any great pictures of Live. I took a few but due to trying to conceal my camera while using it I wasn't able to capture any great shots. I'll post them later. I was also lucky enough to catch one of John Popper's harmonicas and one of CAGs drum sticks.

This post has been edited by PurdueSteve: Jul 28 2008, 9:48 am

[+Ed+]

Nice haircut Steven