Stevie was amazing, the show NOT so much...
by Totofan on 2018-08-16Park Theater - Las VegasA living legend, Stevie's performance was 5/5. He's still absolutely amazing, has not lost his voice or stage presence at all. Truly the consummate professional, a musician's musician; vocals, keyboards, harmonica, harpejji...all spot on. THAT SAID... His performance started 45 minutes late, no excuse. It was like when you're at the airport and your flight should have departed but you're still sitting at the gate with everyone pretending nothing is wrong, no announcement from the airline and no 'Delayed' posted on the Departures board...In this case we (unfortunately) were not sitting in silence waiting, we had to suffer through an onstage DJ that got progressively more annoying as the delay increased. Please don't tell us Stevie will be on in (exactly) 4 minutes, then twenty minutes later say he's only 3 minutes from starting the show. In the meantime, we were 'treated' to a live version of a late night soul music TV infomercial. If I never ever again hear the phrases: "put your hands together", "who remembers THIS song", "make some noise", or "I can't hear you", it will be too soon. He probably made the crowd sing/stand up to at least a sample of nearly every R&B or Motown song that has received any airplay in the past 50 years, it was just endless. Even when the band took stage, the DJ remained to 'cheer lead', and I'd say 1/4 of the show was wasted on 'audience participation', i.e. getting the audience to sing instead of Stevie (which happened a LOT). More time-wasting cliches: "That wasn't loud enough, you should all try that one more time" (or two, or three...). "Now just the ladies." "Now just the men..." How about we just hum some notes for 5 minutes and see where it gets us...For the $200 USD ticket, I didn't pay to hear my seatmates sing louder than Stevie, often with the wrong lyrics and out of tune. The setlist was great, you can't please everyone but it was maybe 2.5 hours of hits and of course 'true' fan favorites. Sound was good, band tight and it was very touching when most of his kids came on stage for (my favorite) "Isn't She Lovely"...perhaps that's why the show was late. Visually, a little weak in that they could have used the screens to show album covers, old Stevie pictures, videos, etc. rather than cheesy repetitive pictures submitted by fans... This was a bucket list performance for me, I simply would rather have gone to a 'regular' concert, the only interaction maybe being "Hey Las Vegas, how are you all doing tonight?" or "who wants to hear another song", rather than trying to involve the audience to such a large degree. If ME not 'participating' in a show results in an extra 3 or 4 songs by the headliner, I'll choose that any day...