It’s always great to see concerts at Le Triton, the acoustics are excellent and the atmosphere is great. (Just one little inconvenience: the chairs are not very comfortable and too close) The club was full and a lot of known faces showed up, a part from the regular club goers, mainly people I saw during  last year’s RIO festival, Dave Kerman (he played back then with Present ), but also Roger Trigaux , Bob Drake (with a special guest appearance) Patrice Meyer and  audience members among them a nice couple from Vancouver (also present last year in Carmeaux) who came from a Magma concert in the south and left the next day to Amsterdam to see VDGG….speaking about Prog holidays.

I am not really acquainted with the Thinking Plague repertoire and I couldn’t tell you the set-list, but  I went there myself with PA member Royal Jelly who is a fan of the band and came over from Zürich and might help you out.

 I appreciated the concert, but I must say that the compositions of Mike Johnson don’t really reach me on a gut level, even so I can appreciate the skill.

The energy level of the band was high, with a special mention for  the excellent rhythm section of Dave Kerman and Dave Willey. A big hats off also to newcomer Elaine Di Falco on vocals , who’s only for 3 months in the band and who is BTW a great entertainer (She gave  the  music a little lighter edge with her funny comment) and  a very charming lady!  The first set ended after one hour and a solo piece for sax player Mark Harris… time for some drinks and a chat with the musicians and audience members.

After the first composition of the second set a special guest drummer arrived, dressed up  in a bear costume with Hawaii shirt giving the concert a zappaesque edge! Every body guessed up to the end of the concert who might be hidden under the costume…. Christian Vander or Daniel Denis? …but  as we learned later : it was in fact Bob Drake…who did special drum rehearsal with the bear costum and a good job on bear-paw-drums!!!! After a free form session including a cup of peanuts used as a musical tool and a solo section by pianist Stevan Tickmeier,  Mike Johnson announced the end of the concert…..

…and coming back for an encore….as usual in Le triton after the concert the musicians and audience members stayed for drinks and discussions until it was time to take the last metro home!!