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Yellow Cab Sometimes Love Is A Dangerous Thing This Must Be Love Cliché There Goes My Inspiration Libertine I Don’t Mind At All Back On The Street Minutes Slipping Past Before She Was Gone Sacrifice The Up Drive Watching The World The One Sure Thing One World Somebody Loves You 
Click here for photos by Chris Craddock of the band at this gig
Review by SueW:
The support act was still doing soundcheck when I arrived about 15 minutes before the show was due to start so it actually started about 15 minutes late. Alec Roeser was a decent enough opening act (except he didn’t have much of a stage patter) and certainly most people took notice when he sang Love Of The Common Man about 3 or 4 songs into his set.
Kasim Sulton, Jesse Gress and Doug Kennedy came out on stage at about 8.10pm and played for about 90 minutes. Unfortunately from where I was sitting I could hardly see Doug and certainly both he and Jesse were badly lit so I couldn’t get a decent photo of either of them. As much as I like Kasim totally solo it was good to see him play with two other guitarists and they really added to the riffs of some songs. Jesse also sang background vocals in both The Up and One Wold which took the songs to a new level. Hopefully he’ll sing on more songs as these gigs proceed.
 Kasim started his set by singing Are You Happy Now straight into Yellow Cab. Kasim’s voice was really good throughout all this gig which was great to hear. Kasim mainly played a green electric acoustic guitar (which I know is an oxymoron!) but unfortunately with someone’s head in the way I couldn’t get many decent photos of it. He swapped for his wooden looking metal guitar for a couple of songs later in the set. The third song was Sometimes Love Is A Dangerous Thing. When Kasim’s played it in the past he’s always joked "take it band" during the music part when of course he has had no band but tonight he was able to tell Jesse to "take it"! Kasim then spoke at about playing in Utopia and the fact that when he received his first record advance he spent most of the money on a car! He said that he did also buy some recording equipment and recorded This Must Be Love which they then played – I still really like the part when they go up the neck of the guitars! After telling us about how much Kasim owes Todd professionally, they played his song Cliché. Kasim sings that song so well so it was lovely to hear that again. They then went straight into There Goes My Inspiration followed by Libertine with some wonderful lead guitar. (Kasim called this the Utopia section of the evening!) Bourgeois Tagge’s I Don’t Mind At All was next after Kasim had told us that it was a song that he wish he had written himself. Utopia’s Back On The Street was next which Kasim hasn’t played at one of his solo gigs since about 2002 so that was great to hear again. That’s a song that is difficult to sing if his voice isn’t 100% but it was perfect tonight. Kasim then spoke about how he’s not the most prolific song writer but that he had completed a song last year (in fact it was in 2006) called Minutes Slipping Past which they played followed by Before She Was Gone. Kasim then told us about how proud he was with Quid Pro Quo (as he deserves to be) and sang Sacrifice from the album. Tonight however instead of doing that great muffled guitar part, they suddenly all stopped playing until Kasim counted them all in again!
 Kasim explained next that when he was in Utopia, they used to record an album, do a tour to promote the album and then take a couple of months off when they all went to their respective homes and wrote songs (or parts of songs) for the next album. Kasim said that on one occasion he had written some music (with no lyrics) that he played to the rest of the band and Todd took it and made it into a song (Kasim said within 15 minutes but I think that wasn’t serious) – that song was The Up which was recorded for their Swing To The Right album. They then played it with the proviso that, as Kasim hadn’t played it at one of his own gigs before, that if they messed it up they would keep playing it until they played it perfectly! It only took the one attempt and it was great to hear live! (Jesse sang the chorus with Kasim too.) They played a version that was very close to the album version. There was a nice link into the next song as Kasim told us about Grady Moates doing the sound for this gig and that then led into Kasim saying about how many New Cars gigs Grady had attended and they sang Drive. Kasim’s new song Watching The World was next before a lot of re-tuning before they played my favourite The One Sure Thing. Unfortunately tonight, at least where I was sitting, this song didn’t sound as great as usual to me as the guitars seemed to clash a bit. I’m not explaining it too well but I’ve heard much better live versions of this song. Kasim "complained" that we were giving nothing back to him (we were probably too scared to make any sound!) and that we were like the Japanese used to be when Utopia first played over there in the 1970s as they used to just sit there emotionless and just clap after each song! One World was next which Kasim dedicated to Michelle Mercaldo who died about a week ago. She used to absolutely love that song so it was a lovely touch. They then left the stage to a standing ovation (as Kasim had previously asked us to because he said that his mother would like to see that on a DVD!) and, for the first time ever, I thought there wasn’t going to be an encore but eventually Kasim was persuaded to come back on stage (although some people had already left the room by then). Kasim was on his own and sank Nick Kershaw’s great Somebody Loves You. Many thanks to Melinda Cain, Doug from Rundgren Radio and Carrie Knife for arranging this gig. I know the people at the show appreciated all the work you put in. All in all it was a great gig – roll on Fort Lauderdale tomorrow!
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Comments posted by fans on mailing lists and messageboards include:
"Kasim did a nice mix of talk and music. He did a few songs, then started on a career retrospective, telling some stories about a period of his career and then doing some of the songs from that period, going from the Utopia days to the present."
"The only hitch in the show was this: Doug Ford, from Rundgren Radio, had told us at the beginning of the show to NOT talk. (They were filming a DVD.) Then Kasim kept trying to get the audience to talk to him, and we were reluctant to do so. "Boy, this is a difficult room," he kept saying. "
"A lovely evening. "
The venue (taken from the KasimInfo.com Blog that day):
The gig is at The Academy Theatre in Avondale Estates, Georgia which is about 20 minutes south east of Atlanta, GA.
Doors for this gig open at 6.00pm and the show starts at 7.00pm with an opening act of a local musician called Alec Roeser. This is a General Admission gig and tickets cost $60 or there is a $75 package which includes a DVD as this show is being recorded (subject to Kasim agreeing that the show is worthy of being released). Click here to purchase tickets and here for more info about this gig.
Pre-show page on KasimInfo.com:
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Tonight Kasim Sulton plays the first in a series of gigs 
The Academy Theatre is advertising this gig as "An Acoustic Evening with Kasim Sulton" and starts the blurb with the opening lines that I first wrote in a press release at least 6 years ago now! (Click