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Somebody Loves You Yellow Cab Set Me Free Summer's Gone Over For Now Mimi Gets Mad The Up The One Sure Thing Are You Happy Now? 
The Kasim Sulton Band played their fifth gig tonight but it was their first with Sammy Merendino on drums. They played for about ninety five minutes and the gig was in aid of Philabundance. The set list was changed slightly from their October gigs as they started with Sacrifice and ended with Are You Happy Now?
Review by SueW:
This gig was in aid of Philabundance although that wasn’t very evident at the venue. There was a box for food donations and I was told that it was filled by the end of the gig but there wasn’t an organised collection of any description.
The opening act, Parachuting Apostles, started at about 10pm and I thought were Kasim’s worst opening act to date as they substituted volume for talent. It was far too loud for the size of the venue and, even when they played a Beatles song that I knew, I couldn’t make out a word that the lead singer sung as he was so drowned out by the music.
The Kasim Sulton Band’s set started at about 11.25pm and they played until 1am which made me grateful that I’d decided to fly in the previous day. Unfortunately this was my least favourite of the five gigs that I've seen The Kasim Sulton Band play so far as Kasim waffled a lot during it. This was a shame as Sammy Merendino was the drummer and he was excellent. Although I always thought that Tad was good, Sammy took the band to a new level and seemed to enable Kasim to be more confident about the way they played the songs. This was even more amazing as it was Sammy’s first gig as part of the band too.
For the first time, The Kasim Sulton band started their set with Sacrifice which I thought was a good choice as it’s a song that most of Kasim’s fans know and is a catchy song so was ideal for those people who were there that do not know Kasim’s music. Unfortunately Kasim messed up the guitar solo in the middle of the song so he replayed it twice afterwards. I doubt that many people actually realised that he’d played it wrong until he said that. They then went straight into Nik Kershaw’s Somebody Loves You.
After Kasim had chatted to someone in the audience, they next played Yellow Cab (Mark Alexander always plays some nice keyboards on that song). Kasim then said that he was going to not talk so much during the songs tonight which he managed to achieve near the end of his set. However he did say that the next song was Set Me Free and that it was the only song that Utopia sung that made the charts and that he wrote it. Set Me Free sounds really good as a band, especially with Mark and Mike’s background vocals. Tonight the ending was slightly extended too which I liked.
Kasim then chatted some more to the members of the audience before they played Summer’s Gone which Kasim told us was written by Phil Thornally. Kasim then spoke about Thanksgiving and next told us that he would mess up the solo in the next song (Over For Now) so, of course, he did but, again, I’m not sure that many people would have noticed. In fact afterwards Kasim discussed with the audience whether or not it was worth them replaying that part. Eventually he did and he explained that it was good practice for him to play it in front of a live audience and that he had had so much on his plate which is why he wasn’t as rehearsed as he should have been.
They next played Mimi Gets Mad (with great background vocals again) straight into The Up. It was this part of the gig that I thought was the best and I actually thought during these two songs that this was the reason that I flew over to see the gig – to hear The Kasim Sulton Band playing Kasim’s music is just wonderful!
Kasim next told us that he was playing The M Room here in Philadelphia on Sunday 20th December before both he and Mike changed guitars and they played Kasim’s beautiful The One Sure Thing and then Watching The World Go By.
Unfortunately it was then already time for Kasim’s final song. First of all however Kasim chatted some more with the audience and then told the story of his silent car ride from NYC to Woodstock with Todd. The Kasim Sulton Band then played Are You Happy Now which went down really well with the crowd. (The song made more sense to me tonight as I saw a train for Oyster Bay yesterday in New York whereas before I thought it was in somewhere like the West Indies!) Unfortunately there was no chance of an encore tonight due to it being almost 1am but they received a great round of applause from the crowd.
We had a couple of Kasim-virgins at our table and they both said how much they enjoyed Kasim’s music tonight. Personally I thought it was a good gig but not a great gig so I think that if they had seen one when they were better rehearsed and Kasim had already decided on his spiel, then I think they would have been even more amazed!
Videos of the gig:
The Band:
The venue (taken from the KasimInfo.com Blog that day):
The gig is at The Hard Rock Cafe in Philadelphia, PA and is in aid of Philabundance. They request non-perishable food items or a monetary donation to watch the gig.
The address of the venue is 1113-31 Market Street, (Corner of 12th & Market Street), Philadelphia, PA 19107. Click here to view the venue website and here for more info.
The gig starts tonight at 10pm and the opening act is The Parachuting Apostles.
This will be Kasim's first gig at this venue and the first of his own gigs in Philadelphia since 22nd July 2006.
Pre-show page on KasimInfo.com:
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