Saw Chicago the band tonight. Sooooo good and so much fun! Only 4 of 9 originald remain. No Peter Cetera. I kind of felt it wouldn't be good without him, but i did not miss him at all! My initial thoughts made me think of people who don't want to see Queen without Freddie.
That is funny, as I had a similar experience the other day, albeit via a different medium.
This is gonna be a bit OT, but I promise in my mind it is very Adam related
I was watching an episode of the cooking show "Chopped" from last year which happened to feature celebrity "chefs" from the rock'n'roll world, including Lita Ford, Dweezil Zappa, Eddie Ojeda of Twisted Sister, and a certain Kelly Hansen who happens to be the current singer of Foreigner.
I used to like Foreigner (esp. their album "4") when I was in high school, but did not keep track of what happened to them after their signature vocalist Lou Gramm left. I saw Lou live in Winnipeg in 2008 opening for Boston (a band that had one original member left at that point!) and he was still pretty good to my ear. In fact both performances were very enjoyable.
So after watching this Kelly guy cook like a pro on the show, and discussing with my wife how educated, articulate and nice he appeared in this stressful situation despite looking a bit like Steven Tyler, I went to check him out online.
The first thing I saw on Google while searching his name was this (troll) post on a Foreigner forum entitled "When will you dump Kelly Hansen?"
www.foreigneronline.com/forum/index.php?topic=3287.0 Thankfully, YouTube is full of live performances of both Kelly and Lou fronting Foreigner. So here is the only #1 hit song Foreigner ever had, performed by Kelly (again, with only one original member, Mike Jones):
youtu.be/9OOLfStBphYButchering ballads? No talent? Come on now...
Here is Lou struggling live a bit with the same song in his prime in 1985:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNGbhnF8ufsI found an interesting note in Wikipedia about one of the first things Foreigner did with Kelly Hansen: "Their 2005 BMG album, Extended Versions, featured the new line-up playing all their classic hits live in concert in one of the most "studio like, clean sounding" live album recordings produced."
This reminded me of how much studio-like Queen+Adam Lambert sounds live compared to the raw energy and less polished live vocals of the Freddie era. And it shows that even when an established rock singer (Kelly has been in a few bands before Foreigner, and has worked as session vocalist) has an uphill battle when replacing a signature voice in an existing band, even if the band is not considered "one of the greatest rock bands of all time" as in our guy's case...
