Being a support act is never an easy task as biggest part of the assembled throng is there to taste the main dish of the evening. So with that in mind I set out to give German born guitarist Mike Stone and his fellow band mates a fair shot at warming us up. Mister Stone is also involved with German Kiss tribute/cover band The Torpedo Girls and not surprisingly a big part of tonight’s set list was made up of tracks from the masked marauders. They kicked off their performance (to an almost empty house) with another cover song however but which one exactly remains a mystery to me to this day. And that’s the band’s biggest problem: most of the songs that were aired (including “Rip It Out”, “Deuce”, “Nice Boys Don’ Play Rock ‘n Roll” and “Back On The Streets” were unrecognisable until the chorus kicked in. Top that off with Mike’s poor vocals and a drummer whose high energy drumming was simply annoying and you have a musical cocktail that was as effective for a headache as consuming huge amounts of alcohol. Unfortunately I didn’t have any pain killers at hand so it was up to the mighty Jeff Scott Soto to lightin’ up my spirits not to mention help me get rid of that head ache!

After last years excellent performance with Talisman at the Lokerse Feesten and his equally great first solo appearance on Belgian soil a couple of months later, me and my companions were expecting another high energy, entertaining and simply killer show from Jeff Scott Soto and his boys. And boy did they deliver the goods!
With the exception of drummer Dave Dzialak the line-up of the Jeff Scott band was the same that played the Biebob a year earlier. Right from the off it was pretty obvious that these guys love being on stage together and their sole aim was to give the punters as much of a good time as they were having.
They worked their way through a 2 hour set that included many old favourites from Jeff’s 20 or so years in the music business such as “Mysterious”(Talisman), “I’ll See The Light Tonight”(Yngwie Malmsteen), Axel Rudi Pell’s “Warrior”, “I’ll Be Waiting ( during which Jeff treated us to a reggae, jazz, death metal and pop ending of this much loved track) as well as several cuts from “Prism” (“Eyes Of Love”, “Take You Higher”, “Stand Up” “ Holding On”) and “Lost In The Translation (“Believe In Me”, “Drowning”, If This Is The End”, “Soul Divine”). A gig by these boys wouldn’t be complete with an acoustic intermezzo that saw Jeff handling keyboard duties and treated us to snippets from tracks by Queen, Madonna and Prince to name a few. There was a little drop in audience interest when they embarked upon “lets play a couple of well known licks and see who gets the most audience reaction” but they soon had every one rockin’ in the aisles again when they returned to their own back catalogue.
One of my companions couldn’t shake the feeling that the set included a bit too much “deja vue” moments but that didn’t seem to bother me and the rest of the audience.
Another top notch performance from the man who is best described as “the face of melodic rock in the new millennium”.