Firefest is festival in Europe that came about after the end of another festival called The Gods of AOR. Firefest started in 2004 and it was bigger and even better than the Gods festival. Jeff Scott Soto performed at the Gods festival in 2002, and even released the show on a live CD/DVD. Jeff got the call again to do the festival in 2008 and he said Yes, obviously or this discussion would be ridiculous.
It wasn’t easy for Jeff because at the time of the festival, he was in the middle of rehearsals for the Trans-Siberian Orhcestra’s annual Winter Tour. TSO rehearsed 12 hours a day and Jeff was probably exhausted, but he jumped on a plane on a Friday in the U.S and landed in London by Saturday morning. He had to rush to Nottingham and meet his band. Luckily, it was his band so it was Howie Simon, Gary Schutt and Dave Dziaklak, but they hadn’t played in over about year and had like an hour to rehearse and get ready for the show. Did they pull it off…well, of course they did! They are professionals. It is a great show and another great live album from Jeff.
But…I have a major problem with this release and it isn’t the quality of the show as Jeff sounds amazing and the band is tight and all is good. It is the fact that this setlist is almost identical to Jeff’s last live release ‘One Night in Madrid’. Every song on here was played at that show in this order. The only difference is that the Madrid show had more songs (and was a totally killer show). I feel like I just reviewed this show and not really sure what new I can say about it. I could basically cut & paste that review here, delete out the songs that aren’t on here and BOOM!…the review and you probably wouldn’t know the difference.
So what I will do is walk through the little differences between the shows so I at least give you something different. Like the Madrid show, this one kicks off with the opening track “21st Century” from his latest album ‘Beautiful Mess’, but the big difference is when Madrid goes in to the next song “Colour My XTC” you get the whole song while her you get a small prelude portion before going in to the great “Soul Divine”. One of the highlights on this and the other live show is “Our Song” from his latest album. Jeff sounds amazing on this one and the band nails the song. A power ballad with a lot of Jeff’s powerful vocals. Such a great song.
Continue reading “Jeff Scott Soto – ‘Live at Firefest 2008’ (2010) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)”
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