by MartyMoffatt » Wed Jul 22, 2009 7:36 am
Moondance Jam - the first date on the US tour
OK a short review which I posted on the Journeyrock forum, but no pics from me yet. I have so many photos from the festival to get through it will be a week or two before they’re ready.
Anyway, first an introduction to Moondance Jam. It’s a classic rock festival, now into its 18th year, in Walker, Minnesota. It runs over three or four days and has just five bands a day on the main outdoor stage, spread two hours apart. In between, there are smaller bands playing on a smaller indoor stage. It’s not a huge festival like Download, and usually has around 10,000 to 15,000 attendees per day.
Journey have played there several times, the last time being four years ago. This year, they were joined by Judas Priest, Whitesnake, Kansas, Yes, Asia, Grand Funk Railroad, Lita Ford, Sheryl Crow among others, and several very good tribute bands. Journey were scheduled to headline on the Thursday night, the first full day of the festival.
First they had to do a pre-show meet and greet. This is a standard activity for all the bands playing (although one or two bands refused) and involves a quick greet, handshake, photo, and maybe an autograph, with around thirty lucky draw winners from the festival VIP area. As I was working for the festival this year, one of the activities I volunteered for was photographing the meet and greets. They have a staff photographer take all the pictures rather than let fans use their own cameras as it gets them through quicker.
The M&G was scheduled for 9pm and the band were due on stage at 11pm. Their bus didn’t arrive at the venue, however, until about 9.15pm, so the M&G was understandably a little rushed. That meant no autographs, and not much time for Barb (Crezy4Ross) and Val (Rock'n'Roll) to get much more than a hug and a hello. Arnel did a double-take when he saw me taking the pictures of everybody, as the last time I’d seen him was at Download a few weeks ago.
After the M&G the band went back to the bus and we got ready for the show. All the photographers were told it was three songs only in the photo pit (which is standard at these events) but I told them I’d be staying in the pit for the whole show as I was shooting for Neal.
The band took to the stage just before 11pm, in atrocious weather conditions. It was bitterly cold, windy and raining. Fortunately, in the pit I was protected a little from the elements, but they must have been pretty exposed up on stage. Neal commented later on his blog that it was so cold they could hardly feel their fingers. With a primarily rocking set the band were on stage for just short of two hours – the longest show of any band at the festival, finishing at nearly 1am. The fact that so many of the crowd stayed right till the end is testament to how popular they were and how good the show was. Many people commented afterwards that Journey should have headlined on the last night of the festival, not the first night, but unfortunately their touring schedule prevented that.
And then it was over. The band got back on the bus and headed back to Minneapolis three hours away, and we headed back to our hotel. They were playing in Wisconsin two days later and we were seriously tempted to forego the last day of the festival and go there too, but logistically it would have proved too difficult.
My thoughts about the show? I think that Journey’s experience in Europe has encouraged them to up the pace a little, and the show now contains many more up-tempo rock songs than they’ve done in the past. There were just three ballads, and no solo singing slots for Deen. Arnel sings it all, and does so while becoming a human whirlwind on stage, running, jumping and twirling more than I’ve seen him do before. Maybe that was to keep warm (lol) but he does look fitter and more eager and has developed into a very accomplished performer. Deen looked fine after his health scare a few weeks ago. Ross looked very dapper, sporting his new look hairdo and moustache. I couldn’t see much of Jonathan as he was hidden for much of the night behind the whale and from my position in the pit I was looking up from underneath it. Neal was, as always, sublime in his guitar playing, despite the frozen fingers. A few times he went off at a tangent into an extended guitar solo and then signalling the others to come back into the song.
If this is the start of things to come on the US tour, everybody is in for a treat.
Marty
