Last night I went to see PFOTM at a club here in Caracas. The show was supposed to start at 11:00 pm but I arrived early and caught the guys still at sound check. At about 12:00 the show started and let me tell you THESE GUYS CAN PLAY!!! After the show they told me their soundman wasn’t there so they couldn’t hear each other well but the audience got a crystal clear sound, where you can hear every instrument and the overall mix was really good.
They played all the tracks from ORBITAL and the songs sounded almost TEN times better than on the CD. They had a new bass player (who is a well known session man here –Miguel Hidalgo) and a new drummer –Gabriel Hernandez - who is just a kid (in fact they all are!). The drummer was a power house, great timing, fast complex chops, and (gasp!) great groove!. I talked to him before the show and told him I heard Neal Peart, Mike Portnoy and Bill Bruford on his playing, he said: ”You’ve just mentioned my 3 main influences!” Very cool.
Our own Piggie (Salomon Lerner) was simply awesome, he did it all!, great mellotron washes, great organ and superb solos! You all would have been very proud of him as I was (yeah I know it would be impossible to talk to him now, but the guy kicked major ass!). The guitar players were really amazing, both of them with roaring guitar riffs, great soloing and really good taste (no wonder, one of them, Arturo Soto, told me his main men were Pat Metheny and Frank Zappa). BTW, Arturo is a fellow DLBN listener and chatter (can’t really recall his nick name but I guess it was ‘sleepytime’ or something). Luis (Lidian), the singer, was on a roll last night, he hit every note, had a good stage presence and was always in tune.
As a band, they were really tight and above all THEY WERE HAVING FUN. You can see them making eye contact and laughing . It was great fun for us too. I saw someone of the audience counting time (me! He he). They started with The Return of The Rain and visited every song of the album. IIRC, the order was: Awaken from Reality, Genesis, I Lost My Wings and they finished with The Queen Maibe, which is my favorite track on the CD and was really amazing!.
They had a few surprises in hand and Lidian, after telling us they had to literally fight each other in rehearsals to pick the songs they wanted play, told us those covers were part of their influences (so cool to hear that coming from such a young talents). After that they play an almost note for note cover of Rush’ Subdivisions which was very welcome from the audience and from yours truly. To end the night, Piggie said: “This one was recorded when neither one of us was even born, so bear with us” and then they play a great rendition of King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man!!. (Awesome!!) All in all, a great night, great music, superb performance by a bunch of very young talented warm musicians. And last but not least, THERE WERE REALLY GREAT LOOKING CHICKS AT THE SHOW!!! Wow a first for me in a prog concert! . There were about 100 people and 80% of them were really young, I’m guessing 29 y.o. was the average (of course, it would’ve been much lower haven’t I been there)
Cheers Jairo.
PS: I guess it’s safe to say our future is in good hands!.
It would be great to have the Piggies wander up here to the north. I know that is probably not a cost-effective venture, but I would love to hear them play live.
Something about experiencing emotional live music that is hard to describe...and I know most of you reading this know exactly what I mean.
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Wow a first for me in a prog concert! 
. There were about 100 people and 80% of them were really young, I’m guessing 29 y.o. was the average (of course, it would’ve been much lower haven’t I been there)
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