The last time that Kasim played Shank Hall in Milwaukee the show was really good but I mainly remember being cold all evening (your fierce US air conditioning!) and the fact that he was served some legal papers while he was on stage! Tonight Kasim played a great show and joked as soon as he got on stage that if there were any process servers in the house that they got it over with there and then! Thankfully he didn’t get served again but unfortunately I was still cold as although it’s February, there was still cold air blowing out the vents!

The opening act was a really nice guy called Kevin O’Toole who played a mixture of his own acoustic music and a couple of covers. Apparently he’s a fan of Kasim’s and badly wanted to open for him last night too so he, his wife and their daughter drove the couple of hours to watch Kasim in Fort Atkinson instead!

Kasim wore a lovely pink shirt (in honour of Valentine’s Day tomorrow) with a smart black suit which was a total contrast from last night but suited the Shank Hall perfectly. He also played a far different set list from Fort Atkinson too! (Of course there are some songs that he HAS to sing each night!)

After bursting into Don't Hold Me Back he went straight into This Must Be Love (which made a great dramatic opening to his set) before singing Afraid Himself To Be and Sometimes Love Is A Dangerous Thing.

For the first time on this tour there weren’t many Utopia fans at this gig which was a shame as it meant that most people couldn’t fully appreciate all the Utopia tracks. Usually when Kasim says “I used to be in a band called Utopia” there is loads of applause but tonight it was just a ripple. Apparently Milwaukee was a big Utopia town but it appears that there wasn’t too much publicity about this gig. Kasim next played Set Me Free (on the 22nd anniversary of it’s release!) and Alone but people who don’t know the original tracks wouldn’t have been able to have appreciate how well he plays all the parts in those songs.

Next Kasim switched languages and sung Malle Babbe in Flemish! He told the story of how he got to sing it at the Night Of The Proms rehearsals and sang a great excerpt of it. Trust me, after hearing Rob Di Nise sing it a few times, Kasim has it nailed perfectly! I just wish I’d heard him sing it in front of a 50 piece choir with a 74 piece orchestra!

Next Kasim played my favourite track from his first solo album Kasim, Just A Little Bit, before switching to his Washburn guitar to play my favourite track from his forthcoming album Quid Pro Quo, The One Sure Thing!

Unfortunately I had someone slightly blocking my view tonight so during Back On The Street I mainly concentrated on Kasim’s guitar playing and it was absolutely amazing! I hadn’t realised before about how fast he plays the guitar only part of the song - his hands literally are a blur so, if you go to any of his future shows, drag your eyes away from his face and watch his guitar work at least during that particular piece! The same goes for Todd Rundgren’s Cliché, although I would imagine that it’s a hard enough song to sing, there is VERY intricate guitar playing on it too.

All too soon for me, it was time for Kasim to play One World, complete with the new line “And there’s Jeff who runs the club in Madison, Wisconsin” (in honour of Jeff Gauss who arranged the gig there last year and does so much to promote Kasim on the various Internet boards and mailing lists)! Milwaukee also received a mention in the song as Kasim also sang “From Berlin to San Francisco, from New York to Milwaukee”!

Kasim then left the stage but the crowd kept clapping and clapping until he came back on stage (minus his jacket!) and sung Across The Universe!

Roll on Valparaiso on Friday…..!