Review & Photography By: Diane Fleischman

The Big Night Out tour made a stop at Musikfest Wednesday night. The pairing of these two groups, O.A.R. and The Goo Goo Dolls have a good deal in common as they have both been around for well over twenty years. This was a sold-out concert with many O.A.R. fans trying to make their way to their seats well into the first song, “Lay Down”.  They moved into “Love and Memories” next, which kept the crowd on their feet as they sang and danced along. One of their first music videos for the song, “Hey Girl” was explained by frontman, Marc Roberge, and performed with a bit of nostalgia and great emotion.  Their set ended with “That Was a Crazy Game of Poker”.

After a brief intermission, The Goo Goo Dolls took the stage,  frontman, John Rzeznik looked fit and trim, but now seated front and center stage. A couple of weeks ago, he donned a medical boot on his right leg. Explained as something that happened after he walked off stage, something didn’t feel right, and then pain ensued.  For this show, the boot was off, but he remained seated. His romping around the stage was surely missed. But nonetheless, there was plenty of fun in store.

As a dozen spotlights surrounded Rzeznik, the show kicked off with “Broadway”, a song which is usually buried deep in the set . For The Goo Goo Dolls, they’re boasting an amazing 25 song set list on this tour, leaning towards more of their newer material, but also recognizing the 40-year span of their career and commercial success ,so there were a few surprises.

A crowd favorite, “Slide” was the third song, and brought everyone to their feet to sing along. “Here is Gone” made a return, and the black balloons dropped during “Black Balloon” which gave the fans in the front rows the fun task to keep the balloons up in the air.  From their last studio release, ‘Chaos in Bloom’, they included “Yeah I Like You”, “Going Crazy”, and their latest single, “Run All Night” which holds some pretty inspiring lyrics, “Don’t let your dreams die young, Don’t let your heart grow numb. We got just one life, you better run all night.”

They hit the way back machine, as Robbie Takac covered lead vocals on “Lucky Star”, from the 1993 release of ‘Superstar Car Wash’, and another surprise addition was the hard rocking, “Long Way Down, ”  sung by Rzeznik, from their 1995 release, ‘A Boy Named Goo’ .

As a joke to their primitive A1 technology, Rzeznik commented that they collaborated with other musicians on “Lost” and brought the reel-to reels to add into this song, a large box affectionately named “Tapey”.

The arrangement was changed on “Sympathy”, as Rzeznik belted out the lyrics accompanied by a piano, and it was a convenient moment to give the other band members a break.

Jerry DePizzo, saxophonist, from O.A.R. was brought onstage to play along with “Give a Little Bit”, adding a bit of authenticity to the original version from the band Supertramp.

There wasn’t a lot of banter in-between songs, after all, when you’re dealing with a 25 song set list, time is tight.  But there were moments where Rzeznik spoke about all the shows The Goo Goo Dolls have performed at Musikfest. Rzeznik quipped, “we must have played here 20 times!”  And can easily be interpreted that they do enjoy bringing their music to the Lehigh Valley.  Overall, it was one song after another, as it was heard by Rzeznik exclaiming ‘Let’s go’ to the band to move on to the next song.

The set ended with “Stay With You”, and instead of leaving the stage and returning for the encore, they carried on and brought Marc Roberge, lead singer from O.A.R. back to sing a long to a cover of “I Won’t Back Down” followed by the show’s closer, “Iris”.