Arnel's voice was in top shape and the rest of the band was playing like they were in their prime. Neal was the incredible guitarist that he always is, and Ross had some great facial expressions to share with the crowd. I was seated in the 5th row facing directly at Ross and it seemed that he was always making faces or gestures to us. The lighting was a bit dark and made photography a bit of a challenge, but I did manage to get plenty of nice shots. Here's the band taking their bow:
MY JOURNEY PICS: http://flickr.com/photos/melodicrockcon ... 7348736782
Arnel was incredibly energetic and he worked the crowd very well, I think that all of us in the first few rows got some good eye contact and the front row got plenty of handshakes. It seemed like Jon was out on guitar a lot more than he used to be, or that could just be my imagination. The whole band seemed like they were just having the greatest time on stage, which is really what counts.
Cheap Trick's opening set involved some political remarks from the guitarist Rick Nielsen. He didn't have any nice things to say about the GOP convention that took place in the area a few weeks ago. They didn't go just too far but they should just keep politics out of it altogether - it's Journey's night, and I don't think the audience wants to hear the political opinions of Cheap Trick's guitarist. CT sounded pretty good, though.
The band had a very good sound mix and although the Target Center isn't a great sounding venue the band did shine through with their audio quality. Cheap Trick's opening set ran a bit long (lasted a full hour), but Journey's set was unfortunately much shorter than I was expecting. In the other Minneapolis thread it was discussed that the band was normally playing a for 1 hour and 45 minutes, but without Heart on the bill they were extending the set to a full 2 hours. The show last night only lasted 1 hour and 30 minutes, beginning promptly at 9:30 and ending at 11:00. That meant that I didn't get to hear Mother, Father, Wildest Dream, or Chain Reaction, but they did throw in Feeling That Way/Anytime and another track from that era that I can't recall the title of.
I recorded "Never Walk Away", here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOuQip3w23M
The audio is very distorted but the video footage is pretty good.
Here is the link to my Journey picture gallery:
JOURNEY PICS: http://flickr.com/photos/melodicrockcon ... 7348736782
CHEAP TRICK PICS: http://flickr.com/photos/melodicrockcon ... 7351831923
