Really enjoyed the show in San Francisco last night. The Masonic is a wonderful venue for great sight lines. I was four rows back in the balcony and had a clear view the entire evening. Tremendous setlist. Since this thread allows spoilers, I'll talk about it. I really loved they included so much from IA and FoaBP. They were rotating Sentimental and I Drive the Hearse, and we got the latter, but despite wanting Sentimental, I enjoyed it. The new songs came off well live. The whole performance was great.
This was only my second PT show. I had tickets in 2003 for the gig at the Fillmore, and missed it. Then I missed the next tour (guessing it was FoaBP) for the same reason. I finally saw them in 2010 with Karnivool opening, and honestly, I couldn't remember much from it, other than how blown away I was at Karnivool. But this show last night, however, was really impactful. The crowd was great (a rarity for Bay Area crowds in my opinion), Steven Wilson was engaging as a frontman (although absolutely obnoxious with his snooty attitude), and the songs really came to life.
Everything was just so much fun and well performed last night. SW even broke a string and it was like nothing happened. The only snafu was they went to start a song, and apparently SW's guitar wasn't plugged in. So they stopped, he remarked on the "dodgy connection," fixed it, and off they went.
A solid 2.5 hours on stage. Great video accompaniment as well.
Everyone around me remarked on the ticket price. They were high. My buddy bought them, and I didn't ask how much, but he mentioned later that they were 144 bucks. I thought that was steep for fourth row, balcony. But it was worth every penny. Speaking of costs...merch...45 bucks for a shirt was dumb. But I got one. I also picked up two of the IA lithographs which were absolutely amazing (one for me, one for my friend who flew down from Seattle and bought us the tickets). I love the IA cover so much, so having that killer lithograph, signed by RB, SW, and GH is awesome. Going to have that professionally framed.
All in all, it was a great night of killer songs and I'm so glad PT is back.