9012LIVE: THE SOLOS

This short live set has its high with "Hold On", "Si" : a short Kaye's solo. Very Wakemanesque in its texture and really good, an excerpts of "Soon" (which was already an excerpts from "The Gates Of Delirium" that will not be performed in its entirety during this live tour. On the lows now : "Solly's Beard" is a quite boring Rabin solo trying to imitate Steve (quite a daunting task, right ?) and "Amazing Grace/Whitefish" featuring the doctor Squire (as Jon will call him). This is a almost eleven minutes bass solo / jam as boring as "The Fish" in YesSongs". It also has its mediums : "Changes" with Trevor starting on lead vocals, Jon taking over the lead 'round 5'15". I wonder why they just took fractions of some numbers; they could have rendered a bit more of their live sets of the time, even if this was not their greatest period. Actually, only "Hold On" and "Changes" are played in their entirety.

FYI, the full setlist of this tour was the following (with very few variations) : Cinema, Leave It, Our Song, Yours Is No Disgrace, Hold On, Perpetual Change, It Can Happen, I've Seen All Good People, Kaye Solo ("Si"), Solly's Beard, Changes, And You And I, Soon, Make It Easy/Owner Of A Lonely Heart, Long Distance Runaround/Whitefish/Amazing Grace City Of Love, Hearts, Starship Trooper, Roundabout.

To be complete, this 9012 tour will be played 127 times in the US, eight times in Canada and only 31 times in Europe. Two stars for this live effort.