[% META title = 'Tour Reviews' %]
Dio packing it in
What a great show tonight. Saw the show front the front row at The Concord Pavillion, what more you could ask for? Beautiful weather, I bet the bands were happy to get out of the heat of the midwest, and get some cooler weather. Dio sounded great, a well oiled machine, fantastic opening to this show. Their setlist tonight was:
1. Killing The Dragon
2. Egypt
3. Children Of The Sea
4. Push
5. Simon Wright drum solo
6. Stand Up And Shout
7. Rock And Roll
8. Man On A Silver Mountain
9. Doug Aldrich guitar solo
10. Long Live Rock'n'Roll
11. Holy Diver
12. Heaven And Hell
13. Rainbow In The Dark
A lot to pack into a one hour set. They went onstage at 6pm and were done at 7pm.
After about a 25 min. changeover, Deep Purple were ready to take the stage. A few of us were ready for 'em tonight, it was Steve Morse's birthday today, and I printed up a few "Happy Birthday Steve" flyers that several of us held up in the front row. He saw that and looked happy, lots of smiles, even for him!
Everyone sounded well, I couldn't hear Don Airey too much, except on intros and his solo, which sounded crisp and clear. Ian Gillan sang without any problem I could tell, he is back in top form. Still wearing no shoes. RG and IG were their usual solid, driving the sound selves. Setlist was the same as most shows lately, namely:
1. Fireball
2. Woman From Tokyo
3. Ted The Mechanic
4. Lazy
5. Well Dressed Guitar
6. Knocking At Your Back Door
7. Space Truckin'
8. Don Airey solo
9. Perfect Strangers
10. Speed King (including bass and drum solos)
11. Smoke On The Water
Encores:
12. Hush
13. Highway Star
Not sure of the order exactly being the same, but the songs they performed were the same as most of the recenty shows. Only Morse snippet tune before Smoke... tonight was Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love. They played about one hour and 15 min., like last year's tour. Another great DP show.
I got DP backstage access after that, and only saw a bit of the Scorpions set. They had most of the crowd in their corner it seemed, not many at all left after DP. There were about 10,000 people in the 12,500 person amphitheater tonight, a fair amount of DP t-shirts, but more for Dio and the Scorpions. From what I heard, the Scorpions are a great arena rock band, great party attitude, the crowd ate it up. Not quite as musically technical as Dio or DP, but they put on a great show.
Great night, now I will do it all over again Tuesday night in Reno. Review on that show to come...