While others were busy watching the debate, I was at the House of Blues, debating how much Tesla was ROCKING!

Answer: They rocked the rock-o-meter quite nicely.

After enjoying the recent live Tesla live DVD, this was my first time officially seeing Tesla with newish guitar player Dave Rude in the fold.

It was also a rare night that found me hanging out for the show with my pal Chris Akin for the second time this year at a show – this was rare even during the 10 years that we did a weekly radio show together.

I parked over at the radio station, walked over to the Harry Buffalo – and got caught in the torrential downpour on the way. My cell phone apparently didn’t appreciate even slight moisture, and spent the next two hours turning itself off and on, leading me to believe that I might be in need of a new cell phone today.

Luckily, the cell found happiness as the evening progressed, and apparently is back to normal.

Score one for me.

A few show thoughts:

Tesla often come off as “the good guys,” and I have to give them points for having relatively cheap merch – most of the shirts were 25 bucks, which is “cheap” these days, even at a club show.

I’m not a big fan of the new album Forever More, and knew that it would be featured heavily in the setlist. They didn’t necessarily sell me into running back home to listen to the album again, but I didn’t mind the new cuts.

Setlist – pretty much great, including some really interesting picks – I think audiences on this current tour are collectively passing out when they pull out “Try So Hard” off Bust A Nut. I know that it caught me by surprise. They also pulled “Mighty Mouse” off of Into The Now – if you’re going to pick a random cut off of Into The Now, that one certainly qualifies. Unfortunately, it’s not really one of my favorites from Into The Now, which is easily my favorite Tesla album.

Encores – very disappointed here – another new tune (for a total of 6 from the new album,) and a version of “Edison’s Medicine” that was easily cranked down two octaves vocally. Vocalist Jeff Keith sounded GREAT the rest of the night, and although they’ve taken things down a bit with the older material in tours past, this was the first drastic adjustment I’ve heard that REALLY stuck out. It felt strange after hearing Keith tackle the rest of the catalog as is in the main set. Kinda ended things on a bum note.

Good news – overall, it was a good show, and Tesla are playing around with the setlists from night to night, so if you are heading out to a show, chances are good that you’ll get a couple of nuggets that you aren’t expecting, in addition to all of the expected hits.

Here’s the setlist from last night’s show at the House of Blues in Cleveland:

Setlist:

Forever More
I Wanna Live
Gettin’ Better
Modern Day Cowboy
Breaking Free
Heavens Trail (No Way Out)
The Way It Is
So What
One Day at a Time
Try So Hard (“one for all of you lifers”)
Love Song
Signs
Mighty Mouse
Little Suzi
Comin’ Atcha Live

encore:

In A Hole Again
Edison’s Medicine

Here’s an interview that Chris did with drummer Troy Luccketta that aired on The Classic Metal Show this past Saturday night.

part one

part two