The band blew me away as always, and being up front against the stage is something I never take for granted. I started out wearing my new blue gloves and JY saw me right away and gave me a big smile. Tommy actually said a couple of sentences to me and I have NO idea what he said - he has to speak up or I have to learn to read lips better!
All appearances to the
contrary, I spent less time than usual taking pictures at this show and just
drank it all in. This may be the first time I have actually seen JY sing
"Lorelei" without a camera stuck to my face! I did still get some
nice pictures of his new tobacco sunburst Strat... beautiful. Also, being
right up front, I was able to get some really good pictures of
Todd, beating the daylights out of his new drum kit!
In "Lights," Tommy
usually rewords the line "Go to the islands and forget it all" to
include the name of the locale where they are playing. A side effect of
traveling long distances to see Styx play is that while it's cool to hear the
crowd react, these references don't usually mean much to me. But at this show
and the last, Tommy began the line with "Come to Virginia" and
"Just come to Boston," and I have to tell you, those two got me. I
grew up in Virginia (well, grow up may be bad wording, but I was born there
and I got older) and then I lived right outside of Boston for almost ten
years. Hearing that voice sing about those familiar places in this song that
has a lot of meaning for me was more special than I could have imagined.