Review by Chet McCaig:
I was one of the lucky fans to see Meat loaf and Kasim at Bluesville......a really great show. I loved the mixture of new songs and old, as always the band was very tight.......and Kasim was at his best.

Meat took control from the first song Whore to Mercury.........he had the audiance in the palm of his hand. He reacted to the energy, and so did the fans........almost every song there was a chorus of Meat Loaf fans singing every word. Meat stopped a few times to just let us sing to him.

The show was almost 2 hours, and people were still wanting more.......I think people would have stayed all night to hear the band.

I want to say a special thanks to Kasim, for tossing me a pic........and taking time to shake my hand at the end of the set.

Thanks Meat Loaf and all the band, you made this old Rocker feel 15 again.

Review by SueW:
Well, it’s taken me 5 years but I finally got to see Kasim at the Horseshoe Casino in Robinsonville, Mississippi! Originally I had tickets for this venue for the Meat Loaf StoryTellers Tour in January 2000 but they cancelled that section of the tour which is one of the reasons I ensured that this was one of the US concerts I attended.

This part of Robinsonville or Tunica (I was never 100% sure where we were!) was out in the middle of nowhere and was surrounded with cotton fields which I’d never seen before! There were only about 3 or 4 casinos in this area but the Horseshoe Casino was easily the brightest with the most neon lights! The concert was at the Bluesville part of the casino and seated 1,136 people. The first thing I noticed when I walked in was how fierce the air conditioning was so I had to put on my jacket! Thankfully I was in the 7th row on Kasim’s side of the stage and the seats were really up close to the front of the stage so I was probably not more than 20 feet away (certainly closer than at the UK concerts even when I was in the front row there!).

Being a casino there was no opening act so the concert started quite promptly at 9.00pm. There was my first concert since I discovered that the first track they play isn’t an intro into Whore but is the Steve Earle song The Warrior and it’s so obvious now I know! They even almost finish the song too!

The sound at this venue was very loud (my ears were ringing afterwards and that doesn’t happen too often) so sometimes it distorted the sound but I really noticed the improvement in Meat Loaf’s voice from the UK concerts. Sometimes at those shows he’d not manage to sing every note (you could see his mouth moving but no sound was coming out or he wouldn’t quite hit all the notes) but tonight I don’t think he missed a note!

Meat Loaf also seemed to be enjoying these concerts more (IMHO). When this tour started I liked the fact that it was pure music and no chat but by the end of the European concerts, I was actually beginning to miss the chat. I know he has this time limit imposed by his insurance company but the concerts seemed rushed to me (especially as they were so expensive on this tour in UK), although it was better when they introduced Two Outta Three Ain’t Bad into the set list. However although the first part of these US concerts are just music, Meat Loaf does seem to chat more before Only When I Feel.

(This is something like my 25th concert of the tour so I won’t do a full review but I will mention the differences between the UK and European concerts compared to these US ones.)

Really most of the changes are just small positioning things that the band do, like Paul not singing the “Break it!” part in Only When I Feel. Another thing is that in Two Outta Three Ain’t Bad in the European concerts, almost all the band used to stand on the right hand side of the stage but over here Kasim and Randy retain their places on the left. This US version also focuses far more on the lead guitarist Paul Crook with him playing one note for ages. At the European concerts it was more a case of all the band being equally commended for their playing (I preferred that version of the song too).

The backup singer CC is also being used more for some vocals - she’s even singing some lines on her own. In Europe she only sang lines solo in Life Is A Lemon.

A few random musings by SueW about the concert:

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