Have fun all you NEARfesters.

[progdirjim(Admin)]

Well I had quite the different perspective.

Friday night - Larry Fast - nice music, nice guy, booorrriinggg show. One guy on keyboards.
Fish - GREAT performance. I like Fish's voice, and from my seat (orchestra) I could hear pretty well. The band was good, and Fish is very personable on stage.

I skipped Koenjii Sat morning.
Discipline was quite good. Again, I could hear Matthew's vocals well, and he is a fantastic singer. Emotive, AND can hit and hold a note. I was amazed at how full, rich and varied a sound they produced with drums, bass, one guitar, one keyboardist, and one vocalist (Parmenter playing the last two roles).
Peter Hammill sucked. That guy CANNOT sing. I don't care how emotive his voice is, he would benefit if he'd cough up some cash for voice lessons. My brother said it the best ' "Who stepped on a cat's tail?"
LTE was great - top notch musicians, top notch performance. I would have liked some more interaction with the audience - I've seen Tony Levin and Jordan Rudess in other bands, and they are both VERY personable.

Sun, agreed that Morgbl was a pleasant surprise. I would have said Vai rather than Satriani, with a bit of Holdsworth mixed in. Excellent jazz drummer, solid bassist. Guitarist did all the talking and had a good sense of humor.
I enjoyed RMI. I've never seen TD live, but I felt RMI had a bit more variety sonically than TD does. I would give the nod to TD's compositional skills.
Echolyn is not my favorite band - see Rick's review (assuming he does one) as he knows the band much better than I do.
Banco. I'll probably be accused of heresy, but I would say they were very good. I do not understand the people (none of our reviewers) who seem to think that seeing Banco is a transcendent experience. It is a good one, well worth it, but I would be just as happy seeing PFM.

Seeing everyone was the highlight, and I'm sorry I was unable to see Cyndee and Angel in person - next time!