Felder, Foreigner and Styx – best pure performance ever

Felder, Foreigner and Styx – best pure performance ever

By Mark Cubbedge
Photojournalist
Historic City News

Consider, for a moment, some of the acts like Steve Miller, The Moody Blues, Dierks Bentley, Darius Rucker and Carlos Santana that have performed so far this year at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre. Just in the last week, Alison Krauss, Willie Nelson and Jack Johnson have all performed to sold-out crowds in the nation’s oldest city.

Let that sink in and consider this; Last night’s Don Felder, Foreigner and Styx concert was the best pure performance of any show there to date. Period.

Those lucky enough to get a ticket for the show were treated to interaction I have never witnessed in over 30 years of attending concerts.

For some they remember the brilliant performance of “Hotel California” by Felder, the legendary song writer and lead guitarist for The Eagles for 27 years. Tommy Shaw (Styx) joined Felder on stage for an unforgettable performance of one of the most recognizable songs in the history of recorded music.

Later Foreigner brought the show, quite literally, to the audience. At one point lead singer Kelly Hansen left the stage and made his way through the crowd taking selfies with fans giving high-fives along the way. He later commandeered a media member’s camera and took it on stage with him. He fired off numerous frames of the band members and crowd giving the lucky photographer once-in-a-lifetime images.

One of the coolest and most unexpected moves of the night came when Foreigner brought members of the St. Augustine High School and Creekside High School choirs on stage to perform their smash hit “I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS”.

Unfortunately there was a huge local news angle missed here by not allowing photographers to capture images of this unforgettable moment for the students. This was the only real “low light” of the night, and a poor public relations decision not allowing this epic moment of community integration to be photographed.

Styx closed out the show with an impressive roster of their greatest hits, opening with “Grand Illusion” and covering “Lady”, “Light Up”, “Crystal Ball”, “Blue Collar Man”, “Come Sail Away”, and finally concluding with “Renegade” as an encore.

Photo credits: © 2014 Historic City News staff photograph by Mark Cubbedge