Toto Rules!
by ES on 3/24/24NMSU Pan American Center - Las CrucesRating: 3 out of 5Right off the bat, Toto opened and just killed it. Unbelievable band of amazing players. Just Lukather and Williams are original members, but the other peeps were stellar. All great players in their own. But, the one thing that stood out was their vocals, both lead and background. OMG, Everyone sang lead and were awesome. Lots of hits that everyone wanted and few cool deep cuts that were a nice addition. Sound was excellent, well done! Journey on the other hand with the new singer Arnel Pineda were meh. He was *As former bass player Randy Jackson would say... "That as pretty 'pitchy' dawg") He was bad. Maybe it wasn't all him as they were having some bad audio issues during their set. Keyboardist Jonathan Cain's mic was having problems. Weird as Toto's set sounded excellent throughout. So, maybe Arnel's in-ear monitors were not working correctly as to the reason of his pitchy-ness. He did pull out one of his in-ear monitors that made me think it was an audio issue. But, you know what, stop the show for 5 minutes and fix it instead of sounding bad for the rest of the show. Neal Schon was excellent, love his playing. The other guys were ok. Jonathan Cain hit a few 'clams' and didn't smile once during the set. He might also have been unhappy with the sound issues. I have to say one thing about the Pan American center. The seats are HORRIBLE. Not the standard floor folding seats, but the seats on the sides. They have a weird back that is just uncomfortable. Even the peeps around us were saying the same thing. The arena is pretty old and its showing its age badly.

