Journey, Pat Benatar, and Loverboy live: August 31, 2012

Loverboy's Mike Reno, Pat Benatar, and Journey's Arnel Pineda;
image from rollingstone.com

Rain, rain, go away...

That would be the general proclamation at an outdoor concert. However, for my brother and I, it worked in our favor. Having grown up on a steady diet of arena rock in the 1980s, my brother and I were well acquainted with the music of Loverboy, Pat Benatar, and Journey. It seemed a more than worthwhile bill, but being cheap, we still only shelled out the minimum amount of bucks to get ourselves general admission seating.

Livestrong Sporting Park in Kansas City, KS

Those seats proved to be as far from the stage as possible, but at least they were covered. Sure, while we watched Loverboy perform the first set, it could have been anyone on the stage and we wouldn't have known the difference, but at least we were dry.

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Loverboy, image from classicrockmagazine.com

Loverboy's Set List

1. Queen of the Broken Hearts
2. Lovin' Every Minute of It
3. The Kid Is Hot Tonite
4. When It's Over
5. Hot Girls in Love
6. Turn Me Loose
7. Working for the Weekend

Loverboy's "Turn Me Loose" live in Vancouver in 2012

Screw being dry. By the end of the Loverboy set, we'd rethought our plan. When we first arrived, we had to pick up our GA tickets and were asked if we wanted to trade them in for floor seats. We were a bit thrown by this, but ultimately opted for dry seats. After Loverboy's set, though, my brother went back to check to see if we could still get ground seats. Sure enough, we were able to trade in our dry seats for wet ones. Now we could actually see what was going on.

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Pat Benatar, image from myq105.cbslocal.com

Pat Benatar's Set List

1. All Fired Up
2. Invincible
3. Promises in the Dark
4. We Belong
5. You Better Run
6. Hit Me with Your Best Shot
7. Love Is a Battlefield
8. Heartbreaker/Ring of Fire

Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker/Ring of Fire" live in 2012

It rained all through Benatar's set. We headed for the restrooms during the break and loaded up on paper towels to dry our seats and, as best as possible, ourselves. Surely the rain would let up.

It didn't. But it didn't matter. We had good seats (well, visibility wise) and it was our first time seeing Journey in concert. Sure, it wasn't Steve Perry on vocals, but vocalist Arnel Pineda handled himself admirably.

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Journey, image from arnelpineda.ning.com

Journey's Set List

1. Faith in the Heartland
2. Anyway You Want It
3. Ask the Lonely
4. Only the Young
5. Who's Crying Now
6. Faithfully
7. The Star Spangled Banner
8. Stone in Love
9. Lights
10. Neal Schon solo
11. Wheel in the Sky
12. Escape
13. Jonathan Cain solo
14. Open Arms
15. La Do Da
16. Anytime
17. Be Good to Yourself
18. Don't Stop Believin'
19. Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)
20. Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'

In the end, we were wet, but happy. We'd paid for the cheap seats, but got some of the best seats in the house.

Here's Journey performing "Faithfully." The sound quality is terrible, but it is actually video from the KC show!

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