Talk about an ’80s party!
I’d never been to the amphitheater over in Ridgefield, WA, but couldn’t resist the urge to see Toto with Men at Work and Christopher Cross.
Toto was the headliner, but Men at Work was the main attraction for me. They were a fave band for me in ’82-’83 with all those hits off the Business As Usual and Cargo albums. Soooo good.
By “Men at Work,” I really mean Colin Hay and totally new/different band members. Colin is the only one from the original Men at Work who’s involved now.
Nevertheless, this was such a fun show. Colin and his band sounded great. No disrespect to Toto, but I wish MAW was the headliner, or at least could’ve played 6-8 more songs. Just hearing them took me back to the early ’80s, and it was great to finally hear some of my all-time favorite songs sung live.
Christopher Cross opened the show and was also fun to listen to. I feel like he may have lost his voice just a bit, but that didn’t take away from the show.
Toto was as solid as usual. I saw them open for Journey a couple years ago in Spokane, so this show was a lot longer and involved a bunch more deep cuts. Still, Steve Lukather is The Man on guitar and they were fun to watch.
The venue is currently called Cascades Amphitheater, and I wasn’t prepared for how huge it is. It’s partially under a roof and the rest is open-air. The part under the roof seemed to be as big or bigger than our local arena in Kennewick! One of the security guys told me that the overall capacity is around 18,000.