Review by SueW:
This was an unforgettable venue as it was basically a patch of grass at the end of a (palm tree lined!) street of shops and restaurants which had been barricaded apart. When I arrived there was already a large bunch of people outside the venue in chairs who had staked out their patch on the grass in the middle of the road so that they could hear the concert for free! Considering in UK we’ve had the worst summer I can ever remember, it was a beautifully hot evening (probably in the high 80s) but, of course, I took my jacket, just in case it cooled down near the end…..it did cool down but only to the low 80s!

As I’d booked this concert only after Kasim’s solo gig last night was announced, my seat was back in the 10th row but thankfully on Kasim’s side of the stage and in the middle block so I could see Kasim fine! My old camera died at Kasim’s gig last night so I’d bought a new one today (the dollar / sterling exchange rate made it a great bargain!) but unfortunately I had the settings all wrong so although I took over 100 photos, I only got a few half decent ones! I’m sure that even David Bailey had to start somewhere!

The concert started (as usual) about 15 minutes late which was just as well as there were loads of empty seats at 7.30pm. Thankfully security was quite lapse about allowing cameras and they allowed lots of fans to stand at the front of the stage too. Generally most people in the middle block stood throughout the show which always makes a great atmosphere. It's possible that security were so lax as near the beginning Meat Loaf got one guard to move from the middle aisle. He joked that he could assure him that nobody in the crowd would rush up on stage and rip his clothes off!

My main memory of this concert will be Kasim’s mood on stage tonight as he was incredible to watch! (Even a non-Kasim fan I spoke to afterwards noticed it!) I don’t know if he’d just had an injection of high-caffeine coffee before he went on stage or whether he was just in a very hyper mood but, especially at the beginning of the concert, he was all over the stage! By the time of Life Is A Lemon I think he’d already gone over to Paul’s side of the stage at least 6 times! He also came to the front (and centre) of the stage considerably far more than normal! It was wonderful to watch! I read online that someone said that at a recent concert they thought the band looked bored on stage but tonight that criticism certainly couldn’t be leveled at Kasim at all.

Tonight Kasim mainly played his pearl coloured bass but switched to his black KSulton bass towards the end of the concert. Kasim wore black trousers throughout and in the first section wore his dark mauve shirt (which ended up with a big black sweat patch on the back!), his blue and white smock-top for Paradise By The Dashboard Light and a black shirt for the end of the concert.

The beginning of the concert was brilliant as always! The Bat Out Of Hell album backdrops were back and they had the 3 screens again so they showed some fire during Out Of The Frying Pan (although not at the end of the song as they often do). I think the beginning of the concert has been really well thought out as it’s just a series of really rocking numbers and before you realise it they are already about 45 minutes into the concert!

It was quite humid tonight (worse after the rain) so I wonder if that affected Meat Loaf’s voice because at times he sang really well but during other songs, he sounded as though he needed to cough quite badly. He also wheezed a bit when he spoke near the end.

Paradise By The Dashboard Light was (thankfully!) shorter tonight which I far preferred and made it flow much better. I’m not sure if that was decided before the concert or not but it started off the normal way (with Meat Loaf stopping the song to talk about not looking in Aspen’s eyes) but soon after that it started to rain quite heavily. The people on stage and at the barrier were covered so were unaffected but lots of people moved to the colonnade parts at the side of the venue to keep dry. I stayed put getting wet and afterwards I actually had to ring my jacket out as it was quite a downpour but thankfully it only lasted about 7 or 8 minutes. Meat Loaf worked it into his talk as when he spoke about picking Aspen up, he said that it was raining that night which the audience found funny and appreciated! It was then that the show started to be shortened IMHO as they omitted all the talk about his 7 pack and he didn’t even used the embarrassed line so Aspen didn’t rip his wig off.

Bat Out Of Hell was (obviously) the same length as usual (and Meat Loaf’s voice sounded really strong in that song) but then there was a long break before they retook the stage for the encore. It was almost double the time it usually is so a few of us wondered if they even were going to come back! Meat Loaf then spoke in the microphone to thank everybody who held onto their tickets (since the April concert was stopped after a few songs) and to those of us who had bought the returned tickets before giving his opinion of those who had returned theirs!

The encore was Black Betty (Kasim totally missed one verse of that song as he was waaaay over on Paul’s side of the stage!) and Mercury Blues but they didn’t do that 4 guitarists leaning down thing again and at one point Meat Loaf sat down on the steps as he was playing his guitar. The final song was Gimme Shelter as always but this song was cut short. Normally CC will sing a verse, then Meat Loaf introduces all the band and then Aspen sings the second verse. Tonight as CC sang her verse, Meat Loaf stood at the side but leant his arm and body against a speaker which he doesn’t usually do. He then walked to the microphone and said goodnight and left the stage. Aspen then came down and sang her verse before the band finished the song. Hopefully Meat Loaf is okay and I was just reading too much into it as the show still lasted about 2 hours. (We’d heard that CC had been sick the night before but you would never have known it from her great performance tonight.)

As I said security were quite relaxed here and it was so nice that they didn’t rush us out afterwards so I had a look at the merchandise stand but I didn’t see any copies of Kasim’s album All Sides available sadly. The thing I did notice was how few people buy concert programmes in US compared to Britain! At home the majority of people will buy a programme but here it’s very much the exception rather than the norm. The merchandise stand was right near the entrance too. After the concert we went out for dinner in the area and as I walked back to my car afterwards (about 2 hours after the concert finished) the crew were still taking down the staging!

Roll on Clearwater on Saturday!

Video clip:
Click here to watch a very brief (9 second) video clip showing Kaim Sulton and Randy Flowers with Meat Loaf talking about "his" car. (I mainly took this just to test that feature on my camera!)

Other websites:
Meat Loaf's official website MeatLoaf.net has a thread about this concert here.

It doesn't mention Kasim Sulton by name but there's a professional review of this concert on PalmBeachPost.com here.

There are more photos of this concert from that website at this link including a photo of Kasim Sulton by Stacey Grant (reproduced on this page).

Also PRPhotos.com has a batch of 21 photos of this concert here including this one which has Kasim in the background!

Meat Loaf Bat Out Of Hell III Tour