"Back to the 80's" at Pechanga Concert Review

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the "Back to the 80's" concert at Pechanga featuring:

A Flock of Seagulls, Missing Persons, Members of Naked Eyes and When in Rome, Gene Love Jezebel, Trans X, Animotion

Here's what I liked

The venue- the Pechanga Theater is one of the best venues around. There is no bad seat anywhere in the house and the sound is great. It's nice to have convenient free parking and great food and drinks merely steps away. If you ever have a choice of seeing the same show at the Pechanga Theater and anywhere else..go here...

Naked Eyes- I'm not a huge fan of this band, so I was very pleasantly surprised at how solid this band's live performance was. They were the only band that seemed like they were on tour and dialed in on the set.

The Aston family. Only 1 of the two original Aston's are left but Michael did bring 3 members of his family along as part of his band...and the kids were alright.

Here what I didn't like

7 set changes...taking a break between each band (a few of which only played 2 songs) made the down time as long as the performance time. There should have been one "house" band backing the principals of each band as there were few all original lineups. In fact only one original line up performed: Animotion, and they would have benefited from better musicianship

When in Rome taking 3 cracks at "The Promise"- technical difficulties frustrated the band, but they shouldn't have made the audience sit through 3 tries at their only hit song..

The stage announcer- who was this guy? He didn't say who he was and he had nothing creative to say the entire evening, sometimes just saying the name of the band and walking off. 

The overall presentation- The Pechanga Theater is well equipt to do all kinds of extensive presentations...they have video screens and more. The outside promoter should have at the very least created 80's themed videos to play during all that down time. Instead the audience heard music from 80's bands they liked WAY more than who was onstage, like the Cure and R.E.M. and Spandau Ballet....why remind the audience your line up was not the best the 80's had to offer? My advise....book one less band and make the concert more of a nostalgic experience.

Below is some video of one of those 3 tries at "The Promise" sent by one of our listeners as well as some other highlights of the show...