Queensryche-St.Pete Beach-11/18/2017

Queensryche - St. Pete Beach Bikefest. - St. Pete Beach, Florida - November 18th, 2017

Queensryche headlined the final night of the inaugural St. Pete Beach Bike Fest. which took place on a beautiful Saturday night at TradeWinds Islands Resort on St Pete Beach Florida. The festival was presented by Bert’s Barracuda Harley Davidson and Bert’s Black Widow Harley-Davidson and consisted of 5 days and nights of Motorcycle Shows and Competitions, Builders Row Indoor Expo, Daily Poker Runs, Motorcycle Auction, Bikini Contest, Nightly Beach Bar Crawl, Motorcycle Give Away Raffle, a large vendor area and free nightly beach concerts.

Now, we've been to a lot of concerts in our lives, but this was absolutely the most unique venue where we have ever seen a show. It was literally on the beach, the temperature was comfortable and the setting was gorgeous, and this being less than a week until Thanksgiving! This was another home town area show for frontman Todd La Torre as he was born and raised in the Tampa Bay area, He even commented from the stage "I live 15 minutes from here"! Also performing for the home crowd was Kamelot drummer Casey Grillo, another Tampa Bay area resident who is filling in for Queensryche drummer Scott Rockenfield as he is taking an extended paternity leave from the band for the birth of his son Rockson.

We were worried about finding parking so we left our house, which is about 25 miles from St. Pete Beach, at about 4pm even though the Concert wasn't scheduled to start until 8pm as we know that traffic at the beach can be a nightmare! We were VERY happy to discover that traffic wasn't as bad as we expected plus we found a parking spot right next to the venue for only $10 for the entire night! Unless you have driven on any of the barrier islands down here in Florida you don't know how big of a deal this was for us! After parking we checked out the vendor area and headed out to the beach area where the stage was set up. There was a large beach area available for the crowd to view this free concert, there were some VIP options to purchase as part of a package deal if you stayed at the resort. Directly in front of the stage was the photo pit, a VIP area that had some white couches set up (a super VIP area maybe???) then a "regular" VIP area and behind that was the general viewing area. We were waiting for several friends to arrive so we were just kind of wandering around getting the lay of the land so to speak. I (Bill) didn't even originally have a photo pass for this show, I threw my camera in the car "just in case". I had sent out emails to everyone that I could think of over the past 2 weeks or so, I got discouraged as nobody was responding. I figured that if anyone could help me set up a pass at the show I should start at Queensryche's merchandise table, it ended up being a good call! There were 2 guys working the table, I am so sorry that I don't remember their names as they helped out bigtime! One of them messaged Queensryche's tour manager for me and after I hung around the merch. table for a while, the tour manager came over to speak to me. I explained everything about how I had written about 15 emails and received no response at all, told him who I had written to, some names of my email contacts and he said that it looked like I had tried to go through the correct channels so he hooked me up. Fozzy is usually Queensryche's Tour Manager but he wasn't there for this show, instead Jay was taking care of things, I would like to say a HUGE thank you to him! Without him helping me out we wouldn't have been doing a review of this show or had any photos!

The band came on stage about 8pm and launched into an approximately 1 1/2 hr show kicking things off with Guardian from the album Condition Human. This was the only song performed from the 2 Todd La Torre fronted studio albums. The setlist was comprised primarily of songs which were some of the bands biggest hits and fan favorites, the exception being a few of the lesser known tracks, Surgical Strike, Screaming in Digital and The Killing Words all from the bands 1986 release Rage For Order. Rage For Order is our absolute favorite Queensryche album but it wasn't a big commercial success for the band, most casual fans of Queensryche don't seem to know that it even exists which is a shame because it is an amazing album! Featured were 10 songs from the bands 2 biggest commercial successes, 6 being from the concept album Operation Mindcrime and 4 off 1990s smash hit Empire. Only 1 song was featured from 3 of the bands other albums, those being Queen of the Ryche, a fan favorite which was released on the bands self - titled debut EP, The Warning from the bands 1st studio album The Warning which was released in 1984, and Damaged which was on the 1994 release Promised Land. The band dedicated their hit song Silent Lucidity to AC/DC's Malcolm Young who had passed away earlier that day. The band sounded amazing throughout the entire show and had a generally great crowd response, it was somewhat muted during the lesser known songs but this was to be expected for a free show on the beach. Vocalist Todd La Torre has definitely come into his own as the frontman for Queensryche, we have seen the band several times now with Todd at the helm and he just keeps sounding better and better all the time. He has never been a "bad" vocalist, just check out some of his work with Crimson Glory for example, but he did have some pretty big shoes to fill as the replacement for Geoff Tate. The band pretty much performed non stop with a minimum of chatter from La Torre, the only exception being about a 5 minute break in the action while a tech. had to change a drum head for Casey Grillo. Speaking of Casey, he is an amazing drummer to watch, constantly banging his head and spinning the sticks! The band performed 17 songs, 3 of which were during the encore, a decent set length for an early 9:30pm show ending time.

At the end of the show I was still in the photo pit when the band was taking their bows, guitarist Parker Lundgren had a stack of about 10 set lists and handed them to me and asked if I would hand them out, I thought that was pretty cool! It was great to get an Eddie Jackson bass pick for my collection of guitar picks, he only uses a pick on the beginning of 1 song, Jet City Woman so there are not many opportunities to get one.

This was a fantastic show and will go down as one of our all time favorite concert experiences! From the many positive comments we overheard from others that were attending quite a few people feel the same way. The full setlist is as follows:

Setlist

Guardian

Operation: Mindcrime

Best I Can

Damaged

The Killing Words

The Mission

Surgical Strike
Silent Lucidity (dedicated to Malcolm Young of AC/DC)

I Don't Believe in Love

Empire

Queen of the Reich

Jet City Woman