The 17-song setlist took evenly from each of the first three Cinderella albums and presented the band's best material.. The first half of the show favored the heavier stuff from Night Songs and Heartbreak Station. About halfway into the show they performed a two song acoustic set featuring the excellent "Heartbreak Station", which saw Keifer switching between 12-string acoustic and pedal-steel guitars, followed by one of my favorite Cinderella songs, "Coming Home", which Keifer dedicated to all of the soldiers returning from Gulf War I. This was followed by a powerful, electric version of the delta-blues inspired "Bad Seamstress Blues", which led straight into "Falling Apart At The Seams", as it typically does. They closed the show with a string of hit singles beginning with their very own power-ballad "Don't Know What You've Got (Till It's Gone)", and ending with their first hit song, "Shake Me". They would return to thank the wildly appreciative crowd with a smokin' encore of "Shelter Me".

It's a shame that Cinderella never quite recovered fully after Tom Keifer lost his voice during the second leg of the Heartbreak Station tour and required throat surgery. By the time he had recovered and they released the Still Climbing album in 1994, the grunge-rock movement was already in full swing (damn you Nirvana!), and most of the 80's pop-metal bands had fell by the wayside. Still Climbing never made a dent in the charts, and the band became dormant for most of the next decade, releasing only a few live and greatest hits CDs, and undertaking only a couple of tours.

Hopefully 2005 will be a turnaround year for the band, as they get ready to headline the Rock Never Stops Tour, which also features fellow 80's, hair-metal, powerhouses Ratt, Quiet Riot, and Firehouse. The new Greatest Video Hits DVD is stirring up some attention as well. I have always thought that Cinderella could have been at least as big as Bon Jovi, if they would have put out a few more good albums and continued to tour regularly during the last decade. Who knows, maybe it's not too late.

Set List
The More Things Change
Push Push
Sick For The Cure
Make Your Own Way
Night Songs
Back Home Again
Somebody Save Me
Heartbreak Station
Coming Home
Bad Seamstress Blues/
Falling Apart At The Seams
Love's Got Me Doing Time
Love Gone Bad
Don't Know What You've Got (Till It's Gone)
Nobody's Fool
Gypsy Road
Shake Me
Shelter Me

Performance 8/10
Production 4/10

Read all of my DVD concert reviews at Roy's Reviews