Rockin' Road Report Archive -- City by the Bay

CONCORD, CA
Sleep Train Pavilion at Concord

August 25, 2006

...I wanna get back to my city by the Bay-aay...

WOW! Hometown crowd -- SOLD OUT! Or at least darned close to it. When we arrived at the Concord Pavilion (or whatever the heck they call it these days) we heard security at the box office repeating "The lawn is sold out." From my seat, looked like all the reserved seats were too -- 12,000 people! Woo hoo! Can't wait to see the crowd tomorrow night at Shoreline since I know as of a few days ago only lawn seats were available (22,000 capacity!)

The opening act -- Stoll Vaughn -- did his fifteen-minute set as before and both Jon and Ross came out to join him on his final song -- Jon on harmonica and Ross on a stand up electric bass.

Unlike my Denver experience the crowd was more evenly divided between Journey fans and Def Leppard fans -- okay, so it helps to be in the band's hometown (or thereabouts.)

I was really impressed by Jeff tonight. He sounded MUCH better than he did in Denver -- I was really amazed. I still think he's better suited for the rockers than the mid-tempo songs, but tonight they sounded closer to what I expect from a Journey show. Deen once again took the ballads and I was thrilled with that -- he has really done a great job of it.

The show started out with a few interesting moments -- Jon stepped on Ross's cord during "Stone in Love" and while Ross did not come unplugged, he was stuck trying to walk across the stage. Typical Ross just made goofy faces and pretended to try an drag Jon along. Jeff had problems with his mic during "Keep on Runnin'", but it was quickly fixed.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear "Dead or Alive" tonight -- that song is just so darned FAST and Neal's fingers were just FLYING! There was a great shot of Ross goofing off during "Faithfully" ("we all need the clowns...") When the guys came back out for the encore, Neal was cordless and racing all along the stage! Guess the Def Leppard guys are rubbing off a little!

Def Leppard's set tonight was also improved from Denver -- I could actually hear the vocals! Still gotta learn all the words though -- I keep missing parts of the verses.