We had the pleasure of watching some great live music performed at one of our favorite venues, the Park West in Chicago. Tuesday night was an evening of Progressive Rock featuring former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett and symphonic rockers Renaissance.

I’ve been a fan of Renaissance’s music since I was in college, and by 1996 I was running a fan-based web site called Northern Lights along with Russ Elliot, another fan who was based in the UK. During this time I’ve had many conversations with past and present members of the band, and even met the band’s guitarist and songwriter, Michael Dunford, when I was on a business trip in London.

This time around I had the chance to meet both Dunford and singer Annie Haslam. It was kind of unusual because I’ve spent a lot of time exchanging email and talking on the phone with Annie, getting updates for concerts and new CD releases and whatnot, and this was the first time we met face-to-face. It was nice to finally have a conversation without a wire running between us.

Renaissance’s show was a bit shorter than one would expect, due to the fact that they were sharing the bill. Here’s a list of the songs they performed:

Prologue
Carpet of the Sun
Midas Man
Things I Don’t Understand
The Mystic and the Muse
Running Hard
Mother Russia
Ashes Are Burning (encore)

Those who are familiar with Renaissance’s catalog will recognize these as some of the band’s shorter songs. Had they played some of their other popular material we probably would have been there until 2:00 am. 🙂 In all, it was a great set and the band sounded excellent.

Steve Hackett opened the show. I was a mostly-casual fan of Genesis (a girl I had a crush on in high school was a big fan of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway), but I was familiar with Steve’s playing through my years as a prog-rock fan. He played some of his better-known Genesis songs, including “Firth of Fifth,” “Blood on the Rooftops,” and “Watcher of the Skies.” He ended with “Los Endos,” which made me want to pull out my old copy of Seconds Out.

Hackett was low-key and engaging with the audience; when he mentioned that the start of the show was delayed because of problems with the equipment truck and apologized that they didn’t have a chance to do a sound check beforehand, the crowd responded with a loud cheer. The band sounded great.

Renaissance and Hackett are on tour throughout the Midwest and East Coast US as well as Canada, with Renaissance ending up in Tokyo in August (details here). It’s a great evening for the prog rock fan.