Toto
July 2nd, 2006
Loudoun Summer Music Fest
Ashburn, VA

The Loudoun Summer Music Festival is located on the grounds of the Belmont Country Club in Ashburn, Virginia and features concerts nearly every Sunday night throughout the summer. The concert stage anchors one end of a large open field, where the seating accommodations are for lawn dwellers only - first come, first served. The entire seating area is surrounded by rows of food and drink vendors, as well as various activities for kids. This is one very family friendly event, and I have never seen so many children and babies at a rock concert in my life.

My, how things have changed since I first started going to concerts in the early '80s, when you were more likely to get passed a doobie or a bottle of Jack from some stranger than you were to see some kid in diapers stroll by.

It was great to see Toto finally make it back to the United States. They are still as popular as ever over in Europe and Japan and have focused most of their touring in those areas. I had lost touch with Toto during the mid-'80s, but in 1999 I stumbled across the new Mindfields and Livefields albums, which saw original lead vocalist Bobby Kimball rejoin the band, and I loved what I heard. These disks saw heavy rotation in my CD players, and peaked my interest in the band again. Being the concert video aficionado that I am, the 2003 Live In Amsterdam DVD was a godsend, and it made Toto one of my favorite bands again.

When I saw Toto on the bill for the Loudoun Summer Music Fest this year, I grew a grin from ear to ear. I could finally cross these guys off of my "great bands I must see in concert" list — without having to fly to frigging Germany to do it. And I would finally get to witness live one of my favorite guitar slingers on the planet, Steve Lukather. Toto is currently in the middle of a world tour in support of their killer new album Falling In Between. This is not just one of the best albums they have put out in a while, it is one of their best albums ever. Just about every song is great.

Toto took the stage at about 7:30 PM, just as the sweltering sun was finally making it's way behind the stage, and they came out swinging. Much to my delight, they kicked off the show with the title track from Falling In Between, an intense prog-rocker, and obvious nod to Dream Theater, which slapped the sun-stroked crowd right upside the head. "King Of The World", another guitar heavy rocker from the new album, followed, and had the aging soccer moms in the crowd, who were probably expecting "99", looking a little bewildered by this heavy new stuff they were being bombarded with. I was loving it.