Well the show was actually really fantastic. Definitely exceeded my expectations. As I said earlier, I'm not really familiar with the MSG stuff but I love UFO and the small amount of work he did with Scorpions. At first I was a little unsure about the set being mostly MSG stuff but spending a week listening to the earlier stuff seemed to be enough. While I couldn't name a lot of songs, more than half of the set was recognizable to me and even the stuff that wasn't was still very enjoyable. Schenker is an incredible guitarist. That's probably not news to anyone here, but I really had no idea how great he was until last night. The guy could shred but he also does it in an extremely melodic way.
The format was awesome. Staging was a little odd yea but I liked that each singer had their own dedicated section for their era of MSG. I also liked that each "section" included some new songs. I'm a big advocate for bands playing their new material and it went down really well with crowd too. They're not bad songs at all either, I recommend the album if anyone hasn't checked it out yet. Take Me To the Church has been stuck in my head all day. Finally, having an instrumental in between each singer's entrance was a great touch.
I wasn’t crazy about Built to Destroy. It did seem like a step back and Barden is no Bonnet.
Well, to me "Barden is no Bonnet" is a good thing. Especially on Assault Attack; it's so overdriven and loud and you can hear every breath he takes in between lines... not my favorite performance by him (Down To Earth is).
I will say that Barden really impressed me last night. He sounded surprisingly good (all the singers did really) and he had the best stage presence of the bunch. Definitely increased my appreciation for the guy. Even when he wasn't singing lead, you could tell he was enjoying every second of it.
That being said, Bonnet still stole the show. Wasn't really sure what to expect since the guy is getting pretty far up there in age, but his voice was in amazing shape. It was astounding really.
Btw I didn't stay after long enough to meet any of them but I did get a weird vibe from Doogie White on stage. He didn't seem that interested in interacting with the other singers and seemed kinda closed off, especially before his portion of the set. It got a bit better when he was the lead vocalist, maybe he wasn't happy about sharing the spotlight with other singers (from what I understand he was the most recent vocalist on Michael Shenker projects before this).
Other than that it was a great time. My only real complaint is that Iron Maiden didn't come on after Doctor Doctor.