Alrighty then, here's my review for Talon.

The venue was the Robin 2 in Bilston, Staffordshire; essentially from what I can gather an old ex-nightclub, with capacity for 700 standing (there was probably 500~ in for Talon), needless to say I was near the front!

Anyway, it all started with Silent Spring as walk-on music followed by Take It Easy, with Silver Dagger as an intro There are seven members altogether, usually one bassist, one drummer, three guitarists, and then a mixture of additional guitars, steel pedal, keyboards and percussion. TIE led into In the City, followed by One of These Nights. They then moved onto a delightful surprise by doing The Last Resort, which they absolutely nailed perfectly. This was followed by three more relative surprises: One Day at a Time, The Girl from Yesterday and Sad Cafe. Boys of Summer followed next (with the crowd in full voice!), then Funk #49. That all in all took about 50 minutes. After a half-hour break they came back on to the tune of the acoustic HFO Hotel Cali prelude, perform doing HC itself - like TLR they got it spot on and the duelling guitars were in fine sound. Next up came I Can't Tell You Why, New York Minute and Peaceful Easy Feeling, then Take It to the Limit in Meisner's original key (E minor I think?), with, like BOS, a fair amount of crowd participation! After that came a piano / steel pedal arrangement of Love Will Keep Us Alive, and fair play to them for making something decent out of what is a horribly slow, boring song (I'm so sorry TBS fans!) Next up came Lyin' Eyes (with the biggest audience participation of the evening), Witchy Woman and Life in the Fast Lane. Heartache Tonight completed the main show. With the encore came Life's Been Good, finished by Desperado. It finished at quarter to midnight, in just enough time for a quick run back to the tram station for the last tram of the night!

Overall, they were absolutely brilliant. The extra members add a new dimension to it, like putting steel pedal onto TIE and PEF, or mandolin into LE. Their four-part harmony is very impressive too. However, there were also a few drawbacks for me. Without wishing to attack individuals personally, their lead guitarist was far, far, far too akin to Joe Walsh (especially) in his performance - it's great to model your playing on someone, but copying little personal things about that artist is a bit off-putting, like shouting 'God you're so nice' (I think) in Funk #49, or calling TITTL 'the credit card song'. Was really frustrating by LBG. They also neglected the whole of OTB and LROOE, as well as only doing one from Desperado, and missing out staples like Tequila Sunrise, BOML and in particular NKIT.

I'd also like to say a special thanks to the bloke, though I'll doubt he'll ever see this, who got quite drunk and spent the break talking to me about heavy metal and how admirable it was that I went to a concert on my own. Thanks man!