April 24, 2005: Soul SirkUS

San Francisco, CA
Fillmore Auditorium

Rule #1 -- no more general admission concerts on a school night without a planned vacation day the next day.... gawd, I'm beat!

That said.... this groggy, not enough sleep, oh my whole body hurts haze I'm in today is totally worth it! What a great show last night! High volume, high energy, and man does Jeff Scott Sotot work up a sweat! Playing most of the tunes from World Play, with a Journey medley (that included bits of "People and Places" and "Patiently") and a few covers ("Purple Rain" and "Crazy" stand out) thrown in for good measure, this 2+ hour show was the best twenty bucks I've spent in a while.

As most of you know, this show at the Fillmore was being filmed for a DVD release.* This meant those of us up front and center had to do battle with the guy with the hand held camera and the official photographer -- made for an interesting dodge now and again. There were at least 3 other cameras that I saw (and with the size of the Fillmore, I don't imagine that there were more.) Hopefully this show will see the light of day as the 900 "seat" Fillmore was only about a third full. Show was great and the crowd that was there was enthusiastic, but it's been a long time since I've been to the Fillmore and had that much room to move around in. (Though somehow that didn't seem to keep the guy behind me from banging his head into mine -- yes, a literal head bang! Probably explains the headache I had after the show!)

*As far as I can recall, this is another DVD that never saw the light of day.

Most of the Nor Cal gang (and our visiting So Cal gang) had passes for the meet and greet after the show, so we all hung around for a while to say our hellos and get things signed. I was actually so exhausted that I barely moved from my table. I did get to chat briefly with Jeff and really just said hello and good bye to Neal (we'll see if my "allergy" flares up after such a short encounter) and headed for home.*

*My "allergy" is in reference to having come down with a cold on more than one occasion after meeting Neal. It had happened so often by this point in time, I was frequently joking that I was allergic to Neal since there had been a couple of occasions I'd met the other guys without Neal and hadn't gotten sick.

No set list noted, so pull out World Play and pick tunes you like, they were played.