San Diego show

[Les]

Kinda tired this morning, so I'm struggling to rattle details loose from my brain. I'll try to hit a few highlights.

I went with a friend who was a casual fan and she really enjoyed herself a lot, said she wants to buy the new album now, so that was fun for me. Her favorite of the new songs was "What's The World Coming To?"

There were lots of empty seats when the show started (around 8:20-8:30 or so), but they filled in fast after the first song or two. After the show, I heard a girl telling her companion, "I swear, at the other show I went to, they started A LOT later." Hehe.

I actually saw a very diverse crowd there. Pretty equal between men and women. There were certainly a lot of boomers, but I saw a lot more young people at this show than at the San Jose show. There was everything from teenaged boys with shaved heads wearing Metallica shirts to a few people who looked to be in their 70s. The floor section was really into the show, which was great.

The SD Sports Arena doesn't have a very good reputation for good sound quality in concert, so I was a little fearful about how that was going to be. Happily, quite a bit better than I feared, at least from my seat. "Stand Back" was the only song where it got a little too sludgey for me.

Some notable moments from the show:

Again loved the crowd response to Come. Half the crowd is totally confused and the other starts to stand up halfway through and really respond to it. I'm really liking this sort of rocked-up Silver Springs that they're doing. Beautiful Child and Never Going Back Again get such great responses. The "tusking" during "Tusk" does seem to have given way at this point to a kind of one-handed ring around the the rosey thing. Grab the other's hand and skip/strut/run around in a circle. Because it's new stuff, I very much dig the one-two pairing of Say Goodbye and What's the World Coming To? The crowd really went especially ballistic during Go Your Own Way.

It seemed like there were maybe a few minor sound glitches at a few points. Then, during Gold Dust Woman, they lost power to the entire back bank of lights around the screens at the back of the stage. Stevie did her GDW pose right at the end, but you couldn't see her. They kept going though. Lindsey blazed through So Afraid. Stevie comes out on stage after Lindsey finishes So Afraid and she says to us, "Word to the wise, we've lost power all back here, so just in case they can't get it back on in the next few minutes, YOU'RE the light, baby!"

Lindsey again talked about Southern California being special to them in terms of starting their careers. Stevie elaborated just before Landslide. She said that she and Lindsey, as part of Fritz, played in the San Diego Sports Arena in 1970 as one of four stops on a very mini, mini-tour. They were part of a multi-act bill. They opened for Leon Russel, Quicksilver Messenger, and a third band, the name of which neither she nor Lindsey can remember now. Anyway, she said that she had fond memories of the Sports Arena because she remembers being so scared but so excited to play that show. She looks back on that now and sees that when she was standing on that stage in 1970, looking out over the crowd, she saw their whole futures ahead of them.

Again, lots of high spirits from everyone. Their newfound calmer, but evident friendship is palpable and I'm enjoying that. It's just fun. I had another great time!