Boston, Styx @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre
By Billy Thieme | July 15th, 2008 | No Comments »
Boston and Styx (above) tried their best to shake off the “classic rock” tag at Red Rocks on Sunday. Photos by Mark T. Osler.
There’s something about seeing a couple classic rock mainstays in an evening at Red Rocks. After all, you’re literally watching a sliver of rock history play out in front of you, along with a few thousand other people, in the best outdoor amphitheater on Earth. What more could you ask for? And from the looks on their faces, most of the audience on Sunday night agreed.
I jumped at a chance to take in Boston and Styx at Red Rocks for a few reasons — mostly to add some historical perspective to the list of bands I’ve seen over the years, and bands I grew up listening to as a child of the ’70s, and to bring my younger son Sandisz (he’s 10) to see some of that history in action (this would be the second time in a few years that Sandisz will have seen Styx).
On those terms, both bands delivered an adequate performance — and were even pretty exciting at times. Each set was performed impeccably and showed the evidence of either act’s years of touring, recording, touring, and recording, and the last 10 years of (mostly) just the touring. Just about everything is rote at this point, which is not to say the bands didn’t deliver what everyone paid for. Nostalgia is what it is.
Of the two, Styx seems to be the band with an ax to grind about being on classic rock radio’s heavy rotation — selling T-shirts with a bold “Classic Rock MY ASS” printed across the back, over a listing of highlights form the more than 1,100 shows they’ve played over the last ten years. This is the shirt my son picked (Styx is one of his fave classic rock bands), though I told him I doubted he’d be able to wear that one to school … yet.
Trying to prove that they’re anything but classics, Styx took the stage pretty much right on time at 7:30 p.m. and offered up a well-practiced arena set, filled with a fairly complete selection of all the hits Styx fans want to hear. The audience screamed approval at Tommy Shaw’s high energy antics. Running manically across the stage through the whole set, he still cuts an early thirtysomething figure.
The rest of the band performed well, offering hits like “Come Sail Away,” “Lady,” “Fooling Yourself,” “Babe” and “Renegade,” among others. The band played to near-album perfection, in performances studded with signature lengthy guitar and keyboard solos. As usual in Styx productions, Dennis DeYoung’s Lawrence Gowan’s keyboard antics were a highlight, with DeYoung Gowan spinning the entire keyboard platform around on its custom merry-go-round, and dancing around and on and off the platform as it spun, all the while keeping up with the music.
After intermission, Boston hit the stage just as the sun was pulling its last rays over the horizon, starting off with Tom Scholz’s famous instrumental rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.” From there they played through the list of their biggest hits: “Amanda” (a special tour-only rendition, according to Scholz), “Don’t Look Back,” “Peace of Mind,” “More Than a Feeling,” “Foreplay/Longtime” and a special version of “To Be A Man,” dedicated to former lead singer of nearly 30 years, Brad Delp.
Scholz, backed by longtime band members Gary Pihl (guitar), Kimberley Dahme (bass), and Jeff Neale (drums), and newcomers Michael Sweet (formerly recently of Christian metal band Stryper) and Tommy DeCarlo — who has his own Warholian 15 minutes going on — played technically masterful renditions of each of the hits, full of the requisite guitar, drum, and keyboard/organ solos, all examples of Scholz’s genius at work. All in all, Boston’s set could not have exemplified a more proficient and complete band. They played nearly every song the audience expected to hear, and played them well.
Speaking of Tommy DeCarlo, this Denver audience got its first glimpse of DeCarlo, the Charlotte, N.C. Home Depot Credit Manager that replaced the late Brad Delp in the slot of lead vocals for Boston, in a kind of 21st-century, MySpace Cinderella Story (see also Journey).
For those of you who don’t know, Boston’s former lead vocalist Brad Delp was found dead in his New England home in 2007 — an apparent suicide — just before Boston was to go on tour. DeCarlo wrote a song honoring the late singer, and his daughter taught him how to build a MySpace site to get it on the web. They uploaded the song, along with some karaoke versions of other Boston songs, which led to another Boston fan sending Tommy an old email address for someone still in the Boston organization. This eventually led to Tom Scholz asking Tommy to fill in for Brad at a fund raiser on Massachusetts.
Ultimately, DeCarlo was asked to sing with the band on their 2008 tour, making DeCarlo a winner of a sort of “American Idol” journey — and avoiding Randy, Simon and Paula all the way. Tommy wasn’t too shabby on Sunday, either, splitting vocal duties with singer/guitarist Michael Sweet and bassist Kimberley Dahme. Sound engineering at Red Rocks, however, did seem to be having trouble keeping the vocal mix consistent, and both Tommy and Michael Sweet faded in and out occasionally, leaving gaps in some songs.
So, after it was all over, the show (and the night) was overall satisfying, and I know from the look on most of the faces of the crowd (made up of much broader age range than I would have frankly thought), that the bands were accepted well.
When I asked Sandisz to boil down what he thought of the show into one word, he paused for a second, then said “Great!” As I started writing, he came up to me and said: “Dad, I have a more descriptive word: OK?” “Sure,” I said, and he left me with “Waffles!”
Not too sure what that meant, but it sounds more punk to me every time I think of it…
Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer and Reverb contributor.
Mark T. Osler is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and Reverb contributor.
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