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Yellow Cab Sometimes Love Is A Dangerous Thing This Must Be Love Libertine There Goes My Inspiration Cliché I Don’t Mind At All Back On The Street Drive Before She Was Gone The Up Sacrifice Watching The World Go By The One Sure Thing One World Don’t Hold Me Back 
Review by SueW:
 After about 20 minutes Doug, Jesse and then Kasim came out on stage with no introduction. Kasim joked that he had been downstairs doing his vocal warm-ups….coughing! They then went straight into Are You Happy Now?, Yellow Cab and Sometimes Love Is A Dangerous Thing with no chatting between the songs. Kasim’s voice sounded really good and clear tonight. The sound was set (at least where I was sitting) at a level so that his voice was a lot louder then the guitars which I haven’t heard it like before but it worked quite well. I think there must be a website that lists all the venues that are badly lit as unfortunately this was another solo gig where the average camera was useless for taking good photos. In fact Jesse and Doug were actually better lit than Kasim as they seemed to have lit him with an orange glow to match Jesse’s trousers! Jesse was wearing the same pair of tracksuit -style orange trousers that I think he’s worn at all of Kasim’s gigs, Doug was in all black and Kasim was wearing blue jeans and a white patterned shirt.
 After the opening three songs, Kasim told us that he and Doug had driven up today and he’d been reminded a lot about the two or three years that he’d lived up in this area. Apparently he had shared a place with Roger Powell in West Hurley and it was at a time that Kasim hadn’t passed his driving test so he had to catch the bus over here to get to the studio! He also said that he’d stayed with at Todd’s place for about a month in Mink Hollow. They then played Kasim’s own song This Must Be Love before he went into his spiel about only playing one Utopia song tonight and played Libertine. Having Doug and Jesse on stage with Kasim really adds something special to all of the songs and this one certainly was no exception . Someone then called out to ask why Roger didn’t give Kasim a lift to the rehearsals if they were sharing a place so Kasim jokingly asked if this was the question and answer section of his set! He then told us that that even back then (about 1977) Roger was always busy building computers. There Goes My Inspiration was next in the set before Kasim explained that he wouldn’t be touring with Todd this June and July as he’ll be in Europe with Meat Loaf. Kasim then spoke about the movie that we had just seen and joked about some of the lines he’d used in it. He said his favourite was the one about the "skinny skanks"! (My favourite was one when he was asked about what a particular arena they were in looked like and Kasim replied that it just looked like "any other frickin’ arena in the world"!)
 Next they played Todd Rundgren’s Cliché and afterwards Kasim said that any song that has the word "vivisect" in it is okay with him! He then spoke about songwriting and about how he wished that he had written the next song that they were going to play – I Don’t Mind At All. Considering it’s not one of his own songs, it really suits his voice so well and tonight it seemed to me that he sung it slightly deeper than normal. Kasim then spoke about how he feels that he doesn’t play enough of his solo gigs (don’t we all!!!) and mentioned his next one (Tuesday 24th in Boston, MA) before he told us the best news of the evening which is that he’s been working on some new material and had one completed enough to let Doug hear it earlier! He did joke though that it would probably be a year before he’d completed it enough for him to call it complete!
 Back On The Streets was next and that was just brilliant to hear with three guitars plus Kasim’s voice sounding so good! It was definitely one of the highlights of the set for me tonight and I could see lots of people’s feet tapping along to it! Kasim then spoke really fondly about his year or so that he spent playing as part of The New Cars – it’s obvious that he wishes that that project could have been successful and continued longer than it did. They then sang Drive. The warmth of Kasim’s voice really comes out in that song so beautifully. Kasim said that he doesn’t usually explain why he writes certain songs but tonight he told us that the next song was about not knowing what you’ve got until its gone and about wishing that you had done something different – the song was Before She Was Gone. Kasim then explained that in Utopia often one of them would write some lyrics or a melody and then another of then would complete it and that that had happened with The Up as Kasim had written the melody and Todd had taken it away and wrote the lyrics. Jesse sang the chorus on this song again tonight which is always great to hear. Sacrifice was next although neither Doug or Jesse had noticed that Kasim had moved his capon so they weren’t ready for the song which meant that Kasim played the intro on his own for a short while! Doug’s guitar playing in that song is realty great! He recreates his own Quid Pro Quo version perfectly. They then switched guitars ready for Kasim’s latest (before today) song Watching The World Go By. As Kasim reached over for his guitar I could see that he did it slightly stiffly. He explained that his family had celebrated Greek Easter a few weeks ago and that they had all gone over to one of his brother’s houses where they had had a trampoline and he had pulled his back on it, plus he’d opened his garage door awkwardly two days ago so had pulled it again. He then showed us the big lumbar-pain-plaster he had on his back! My all-time favourite The One Sure Thing was next which was just brilliant to hear. The words of that song are so beautiful. Let’s just say that it was a "unique" version of the song tonight as Kasim sang the first line of the second verse and then went back to the indecision line from the first verse ! After they’d finished the song (while Jesse and Doug looked bemusedly on as they weren’t sure what Kasim was doing) he then sang part of it again as he said that he had missed that verse but in fact he actually sang exactly the same again (first line and then back to the first verse!) so we never did hear the "When you feel you’ve reached your limit and all you want to do is understand, I’ll be there to offer you light, tell you everything’s going to be all right" part!
 Far too soon for me it was time for Kasim to finish his set with One World! He explained that Utopia used to finish their set with the song which is why he does too! It’s a great one for him to end on as it gets everyone clapping. Tonight we had the name Woodstock in the song! Kasim then received a standing ovation before he thanked us all for coming and all three of them left the stage. Thankfully Kasim soon came back on stage (on his own) and said that he was going to play one more song and that we had a choice of one of his own songs, a John Lennon song (presumably Across The Universe) or a Nik Kershaw song (I would guess Somebody Loves You). He then decided that the other two didn’t need any more royalties so he would sing his own song which was his (almost) signature song Don’t Hold Me Back! All in all it was a brilliant gig in a really lovely venue with a really good receptive crowd…exactly how I like to see a Kasim Sulton gig!
The venue (taken from the KasimInfo.com Blog that day):
Doors open tonight at 6.30pm with a showing of the Meat Loaf movie In Search Of Paradise (which features Kasim too) at 7.30pm and Kasim's set is expected to start at about 9.30pm. This is a General Admission gig and tickets are $16.95. They can be purchased online here or on the door for $15.
Click here to view the venue website. The address is 291 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY. This will be Kasim's first gig at this venue but, of course, Kasim is no stranger to these parts as they are steeped in Utopia history!
The Bearsville Theater was the brainchild of Albert Grossman (who used to own Bearsville Records and was the person who Kasim wrote Set Me Free to), although the theater wasn't opened until after his death. Among the stars who have appeared on this theaters stage are Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward The Pretenders, Jimmy Cliff and Warren Zevon. The Bearsville Theater property also includes two restaurants and the offices of WDST and Radio Woodstock. Both the radio stations are housed in Utopia which is Todd Rundgren’s former video studio!
The theater is a Proscenium style stage which is 23.5 feet deep and 50 feet wide.
Pre-show page on KasimInfo.com:
Many thanks to RMAC for lots of the photos on this page.
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