Concert Wrap — Foreigner and Daughtry, June 3 @ Bud Walton Arena
June 4th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
We couldn’t get a professional camera in, so this had to do. Blurry, grainy cell phone photo by KEVIN KINDER, Northwest Arkansas Times. It should give you an idea of the stage and video setup, at least.
Daughtry never had a chance.
He needed fire jugglers, contortionists or cannons that shot dollar bills into the air. Something.
Because musically, he was upstaged before he and his band ever took the stage.
That’s because Foreigner had Bud Walton Arena — pardon the pun here — at a scorching 103 degrees.
The latest incarnation of the band, featuring original guitarist Mick Jones and a supporting cast of characters (which does not include original lead vocalist Lou Gramm), played the role of classic rock jukebox, dropping radio hit after radio hit, even throwing in a brief version of Led Zeppelin‘s “Whole Lotta Love.”
It was a silly good time.
Click the ‘”more” link below to continue reading about Foreigner and Daughtry’s recent performance in Fayetteville.
Foreigner came out rocking with “Double Vision,” and kept the tempo moving with songs such as “Cold As Ice” and “Urgent” before slowing things down for a massive singalong during “I Want To Know What Love Is,” the second-to-last song.
Of course, they couldn’t let fans go without “Hot Blooded,” so they came back and belted that one, too, touching off an air-guitar and screaming bit of madness in the more than 10,000 Wal-Mart shareholders, associates and members of the public who showed up for the concert, which was provided for free by Wal-Mart as a precursor to Friday’s (June 5) Shareholders’ meeting.
I described to a friend right after the show that Foreigner was ridiculous, and she took offense. But I meant that in the best way possible.
The band was tight, and Kelly Hansen, though no Lou Gramm, serves a rambunctious if not enthusiastic replacement.
The biggest secret to Foreigner’s fantastic performance likely came long before the first attendee ever stepped into Bud Walton Arena, which is a fantastic venue for concerts and was lavishly decked out with video boards and stage lighting.
The eight songs the band chose for the evening were all radio hits: nothing new, nothing surprising, just the hits. The band did announce it would be teaming with Wal-Mart for an upcoming album to be sold exclusively at Wal-Mart, right before playing a song released in 1984.
And it was exactly what the crowd had come to see.
Daughtry and his able backing band, on the other hand, could have taken a few tips. He frontloaded his set list with some of his more popular songs, including, consecutively, “What I Want,” “It’s Not Over” and “Feels Like Tonight.”
It left him playing unfamiliar new songs in the middle of his set, and the crowd responded — by walking out the doors. Daughtry certainly has talent, but he couldn’t contain the audience this night. By the end of the set, he was playing to a crowd perhaps a fifth of what Foreigner had just performed for. His set, by the way, ended just before 9 p.m., so it’s not like the crowd was in danger of staying past their bedtime.
He also, it seemed, tried too hard. Daughtry, looking awfully buff these days, did some obligatory chest pounding and rock posing on the harder tracks, but he’s really a much better “I love and miss you sweety” kind of rocker than he is a “I’m angry and you should listen to me” kind of rocker.
He did head that direction in his final numbers, and those who stayed remained enthusiastic to the end.
He closed the set with “Home,” which, ironically, was where a lot of the crowd already was.
Foreigner setlist: 1) Double Vision; 2) Head Games; 3) Cold As Ice; 4) Feels Like The First Time; 5) Urgent; 6) Jukebox Hero, with Led Zep’s “Whole Lotta Love” as an aside; 7) I Want To Know What Love Is;
Encore: 8) Hot Blooded
Daughtry setlist: 1) •not sure on this one•; 2) What I Want; 3) It’s Not Over 4) Feels Like Tonight; 5) September; 6) Over You; 7) I think it’s “My Back To You”… it’s a new song 8) •not sure on this one•; 9) •not sure on this one• 10) •not sure on this one•
Encore: 11) Long Way; 12) What About Now; 13) No Surprise
Encore 2: 14) Home