Jones Beach Ball
Setlist:
1. "Woman From Tokyo"
2. "Ted The Mechanic"
3. "Lazy"
4. "No One Came" (with strobe lights! - see my notes below)
5. "Fools"
6. "Pictures Of Home"
7. "Perfect Strangers"
8. "When A Blind Man Cries"
9. "Smoke On The Water"
Encore:
10. "Hush"
11. "Highway Star"
Jones Beach Amphitheater officially holds 12,000. I think it was only 50% full (at most) tonight. As I went in there, it was practically empty, and as Ted Nugent comes on, the audience is still very sparse. But he gets a lot of people who are there standing up and sticking their fists in the air throughout the set... which was not the case with DP. I had a 4th row seat, but after Ted Nugent a lot of people in front of me left, so I managed to get to the 2nd row. And I was probably the only person in that front middle section who remained standing throughout Purple's set. It felt soooooo strange to be at a DP gig (a fantastic one for that!) where half of the people in the first 10 rows (well, let's forget the rest) don't even stand up before the encore!!!
Still, as I said, it was a brilliant show. Of course I can't be very objective, because being near the front you don't get to hear the overall soundmix. I couldn't hear Jon at all except in his solo sections, in fact :-(((
Lots of smiles from Steve, and he and Roger had perfected their comical act even further.
I'm too tired to write a comprehensive review, but just a few things:
Yes, they did have strobe lights on during "No One Came", but this was around 8:20pm, before it got dark, and it didn't work at all - I only thought "Shit, what's wrong with the stage lights? They've suddenly gone off!" and only a while later I realised they had strobes instead!!!
A funny incident during the first number, "Woman From Tokyo", was that someone threw a beach ball (with some message inscribed on it) onto the stage, which Ian Gillan kicked back into the audience, and throughout the number, the ball kept being bounced around amoungst the audience! (It nearly hit my bunnies, too!!)
Steve's guitar parade tonight was really good - it wasn't that long altogether, but he managed to pack short snippets of all sorts of things from "Strawberry Fields", "Stairway to Heaven", "You Really Got Me", etc. etc. into a dazzling sequence, and this really got the audience going.
And I was amazed by the audience reaction to "Hush" - of course it had been a big hit here, but even the people who weren't singing along to anything else were suddenly wild and at least sang along to the chorus bit, which (as I'd only heard this live in Japan & Europe so far) was really surprising. And "Highway Star", yes, that did the job. Those two numbers got more people on their feet than even "Smoke" did, which is rather unthinkable in Europe...
Additional comment from Joey Gioielli:
I just have to add something after reading Akiko's review for Jones Beach. She was right about it being half full, but that was when Nugent was on and there was a lot of fog. Granted, the show did not sell out, but it was at least 90 % full when Purple and Skynyrd were on. Just my 2 cents after reading Akiko's review.
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