Don Messerli’s Blog |

Regine and I went to see Live in concert Tuesday night at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood. Although its only about 30 minutes away; this is only the second time I’ve been to the place. We went to see some standup comedy at the improv about a month ago. The casino is big; but nothing like Foxwoods in Connecticut. Everything is shiny and new. We’ll see how it looks in a couple of years. The venue for the concert was nice. Much better than the Hard Rock in Las Vegas; but that’s a whole other story. Surprisingly, the concert didn’t sell out. Probably because a large portion of Miami’s population never heard of Live. You can come up with your own “why” theory.

The concert was excellent. It took a little time for the energy to build; but by the time they got around to doing “White, Discussion”, things had climbed to a fever pitch. The majority of the songs they played were from their first two albums: Mental Jewelry and Throwing Copper. This is a good thing since most people I know agree that they have yet to match those albums. They played some stuff from Secret Samadhi as well as four or five songs from their yet-to-be-release new album called Songs from Black Mountain. The new album was just completed and will be released in November. Almost all of the new songs were very good.

Ed Kowalczyk was a bit more buff than I remember. He still needs to do something about those eyebrows and farmer tan. He’s also the only bald/buff guy I’ve seen in a long time that doesn’t have any tattoos.

Again, the concert was excellent. I recommend seeing them if they come to your sh*t town.