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Set Me Free Over For Now Yellow Cab Libertine There Goes My Inspiration Somebody Loves You I Don’t Mind At All Sacrifice Are You Happy Now? Minutes Slipping Past Don’t Hold Me Back In The Name Of Love Love Alone One World
Second Set: 
Long Ramble by SueW:
Kasim’s 7.00pm set started just before 7.30pm and the best part was that he has the keyboards back in his show! Not only does it give him more scope of songs to sing but it also “breaks up” the set a bit so it was a great success! Kasim started his set with Set Me Free (which was great to hear again!) and then went straight into Over For Now (after he’d waited for Doug Kennedy to manoeuvre his way onto stage). Unfortunately Doug’s guitar wasn’t very loud at this venue, especially when Kasim was on the keyboards. (Kasim explained later that he’d bought himself a new amplifier which he was using so maybe that is why or maybe it was just where I was sitting.)
Kasim then switched to guitar and explained that he was sorry that he didn’t have his new album available yet (“it’s taking longer than I thought) but he sang Yellow Cab from it . (I really miss Dennis’s do-do-dos from that song but Kasim sang us a few at the end.) He then went straight into Libertine (with some great lead guitar by Doug in the middle!) followed by There Goes My Inspiration. Kasim then spoke about how Christmas is advertised earlier and earlier each year (you had to be there!) before singing Nik Kershaw’s Somebody Loves You and then Bourgeois Tagge’s I Don’t Mind At All.
Kasim’s own Sacrifice was next (which was very popular!) complete with some great lead from Doug in the middle and that inspired muted guitar string part. Kasim then spoke in great detail about his new album and explained it as “This April it’s 31 years since I started in this business and that’s a pretty long time to be doing any job. I’m very proud of my musical history and what I’ve accomplished. Even though I‘m not the most prolific artist, the stuff that I’ve done means a lot so I thought that it would be nice to put an album out with little bits and pieces from all the four solo records that I’ve released. I’ve also completed 3 new songs so they are on it too. I took several songs from my first solo album Kasim that I did, from the Price Sulton album, from The Basement Tapes and from Quid Pro Quo. I chose certain tracks from each one of those records and I found some yet more unreleased demos that had never been heard before and compiled them all to a two disk double album. There’s 27 songs. When I started doing this, I figured I’d get them all together and slap them on a CD, put a cover together and throw it out there but it turned out to be much more complicated than I originally thought, getting all the material together to sound good (to make it sound as though it belonged on the same CD) was a lot harder than I expected so for the past month I’ve been looking at a computer screen (just like going to work every day!), just trying to get all this stuff together.
The cover looks really cool and the songs on it are really cool and I wrote some liner notes to it and it’s good some really good stuff on it so when it does finally come out on Valentine’s Day so that if you get a chance to buy it then really it’s a cumuli nation of my work up until now so I’m very proud of it. The album is called All Sides meaning all sides of my life.”
Kasim then played Are You Happy Now (one of the new songs on the album) and for this set used the line “You’re drinking decaff in Oyster Bay, I’m still in Schenectady, a world and a half away”. Afterwards someone asked Kasim if it was a protest song, Kasim explained that he likes people to define songs themselves so in that case for that person it was a protest song!
Minutes Slipping Past was next before Kasim went straight into Don’t Hold Me Back. He then switched back to the keyboards and said that he was going to sing a song that’s on All Sides but was also on The Basement Tapes and that he’d never played live on stage before – In The Name Of Love which was amazing to hear live!
Doug Kennedy then left the stage but before he did, he gave Kasim a dollar bill or something as earlier Kasim had joked that he was going to fine him for talking to someone in the audience so it was hilarious that he just opened his wallet and left it on Kasim’s keyboards! Kasim next sang Love Alone (on the keyboards of course) which was just beautiful to hear live again!
Kasim then finished his set with (what else as Michelle was in the audience?!!) One World which most people joined in with. Tonight we had the line "From New York to Schenectady"!
Kasim then left the stage but thankfully it wasn’t too long before his next gig! Only about an hour in fact. Unfortunately this set wasn’t very well attended (maybe people were off foraging for food and drink elsewhere!) but Kasim still played a great set and he explained that usually his second set is "a little on the loose side".
To start with I thought it was a case of deja vous as Kasim started with exactly the same four songs as he did his first set - Set Me Free and Over For Now on the keyboards and then Yellow Cab and Libertine on guitar! Thankfully he then switched to talking about The New Cars and sang his wonderful performance of Drive and then went into a breathtaking version of Todd Rundgren’s Cliché.
Kasim then spoke about All Sides and said that it included Are You Happy Now which he then played. Next Kasim asked us if anybody had a favourite song that he should sing and the two suggestions were Winston Smith and Sacrifice. Kasim said that they were going to work on Mimi Gets Mad but he did sing Sacrifice which received a tremendous round of applause. Near the end of the song I could see that one of his guitar strings was getting looser and it broke at the end so Kasim had to switch guitars.
After There Goes My Inspiration, Kasim then went straight into my favourite, The One Sure Thing which was just beautiful to hear again live! Before Kasim sang Minutes Slipping Past he explained why he wrote it. After two breath-taking songs he then changed the tempo totally and played Sometimes Love Is A Dangerous Thing and Don’t Hold Me Back.
Kasim then moved back to the keyboards and someone called out for him to tell a story so he told us the hilarious (and slightly embellished!) story of Meat Loaf and DeadRinger For Love at The Royal Variety Performance in December. It certainly did explain why Kasim was on stage (not that I was complaining!) and why he is visibly shouting at Meat Loaf at the start of the song! (I won’t repeat the story here as I don’t want Kasim fired before the start of the Meat Loaf tour!) Kasim then played In The Name Of Love again.
Doug Kennedy then left the stage (after picking up the money that he’d left on the keyboards at the end of the first set!) and Kasim played Love Alone on his own which was amazing. Then, all too soon, it was time for Kasim to leave the stage!
Roll on Pittsburgh on Tuesday!
Kasim's Music:
Comments via e-mail and posted on various mailing lists and messageboards include:
"It was a wonderful evening."
"I have been a Kasim fan for thirty years and going to these solo shows is "Like coming Home" Kasim makes everyone feel special and appreciated , like family. I loved the addition of the keyboards. I had Utopia flashbacks during "Love Alone". I saw the "Adventures in Utopia" show so many times that I could hear the backing vocals in my head."
"Great lyricist with keen attention on songcraft. A seaoned tour veteran playing the gamut from Utopia songs from his days with Todd Rundgren, to original ballads."
Click here for a batch of photos from this gig by RMAC.
Pre-show page on KasimInfo.com: 
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