Ok, so here's the review of the early bird...
Boppard seems to be a beautiful town, very romantically built around the banks of the river Rhine. Not the typical place you'd expect a rock band to perform, but I'm sure the Saga fans behaved themselves and did not bing too much of trouble into the quiet and peaceful atmosphere.
I've missed the opening act Phebus, so I cannot commenr.
Saga stared a set with fantastic sound. (I was standing quite close to the stage)
The setlist was a little bit confused, it was mentioned before on the forums, they played so many hits and all time favourite mid and up tempo stuff at the beginning that you wondered how the rest of the set would do without these songs.....and they were actually missing in the middle.
Steve Negus seemed to be enjoying his night with the boys and the audience seemed to like it. He did a brilliant job playing the old and new stuff . Great to see him again although Brian's playing adds a nice, slightly more powerful aspect to the songs.
Now the bad news:
As the band played the sound got louder and worse! The runaway was a completley messed up chaos. It's all down to the keyboard sounds, especially the pads. Harmonically they are so rich, there's just NO room for ANYTHING else that comes off stage. It was dreadful!
Back to the shadows is a terrible song for Michael's voice, verses to low, choruses to high for his range. He obviously did not enjoy it at all!
The ending was OK again, but it's clearly a night that leaves me with mixed emotinos.
Ah, one funny thing I forgot to mention. Ian rushed on stage during Ice nice after the keyboard bit, very cool looking dynamic way to run on stage....if only his amp would have been turned up.....