Foreigner - Universal Studios, Orlando, Florida - March 15, 2014

Review by Bill St. Arnauld

 

 It's been years since I (Bill) saw Foreigner live in concert, MANY years! I only saw them once and that was when I was 14 years old (I'm almost 50 now!) Foreigner was the first concert that I ever saw, the first of many, when I did see them way back when it was on the Double Vision Tour and the band looked much different than it does now. I have always been a fan, to me the first 3 albums Foreigner, Double Vision and Head Games are some of the absolute best albums in Rock history, they lost me with their 4th album, simply titled 4, as it was to commercial for my tastes although it was a HUGE success for the band.

 

 The band has undergone numerous changes over the years with the one constant being guitarist and founding member Mick Jones. Iconic vocalist Lou Gramm left the band in 1990, there were a couple of line up changes on vocals, including a short stint where Lou Gramm returned to the band. In my opinion it seems as though one of the hardest things a band can do is to get a successful replacement for a well known vocalist, Foreigner pulled that off with landing current vocalist Kelly Hansen, he's a powerhouse with an amazing voice who can cover the older songs with ease. Kelly's previous band, Hurricane, had a fairly big hit in the late 80s with the song I'm on to You. Current members of the band, other than Jones and Hansen include Thom Gimbel, Michael Bluestein, Chris Frazier, Bruce Watson and last but not least Jeff Pilson, most well known as the bassist for 80s Metal band Dokken.

 

 The concert was held at Universal Studios in Orlando Florida as part of their Mardi Gras concert series. This worked out great for us as we have annual passes to Universal Studios and it's only about a 1 1/2 hour drive to the theme park for us. Admission to the Mardi Gras concerts is included with our annual passes. After some initial confusion with Guest Services about a photo pass I contacted the band's tour manager and he took care of everything. The area in the park where the concerts are held is a pretty big space and it was absolutely packed, alot of people turned out for this show! At 8:30pm the band took the stage and blasted through a set that included some of Foreigner's biggest hits, they really sounded great and the crowd was into the show, singing along with the band, some dancing, just an all around fantastic and energetic show. I was only in the photo pit for the first 3 songs which is the standard for concert photographers, Mick Jones didn't come out until later in the show so I was only able to get a couple of photos of him that I took from back in the crowd.

 

 Set list:

 

Double Vision, Head Games, Cold as Ice, Waiting for a Girl Like You, Blue Morning Blue Day, Dirty White Boy, Say You Will, Feels Like the First Time, Urgent, Juke Box Hero, I Want to Know What Love Is, Hot Blooded

 

 We would like to thank John Lappen for setting the photo pass up for us and for being so timely in getting back to us by email, he was the absolute fastest that we have ever had anyone write back to us about setting up a photo pass, Tour Manager Robin Irvine for straightening out our photo pass issue that we had, and Foreigner for sounding great and putting on an amazing show.