Slideshow: Joe Walsh, Toto, Gin Blossoms, MC Hammer and more at the Jack FM show in Irvine
With six artists performing over the course of exactly six hours – Missing Persons kicked things off at 4:48 p.m. and Joe Walsh wrapped everything up at 10:48 – Jack's 7th Show offered up a menu sure to please casual concert-goers out to party hard on a Saturday night.
With all acts playing relatively short sets at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, hits were the main course, giving the audience all the substance they needed to feed on at an event that started at about the same time temperatures mercifully began to drop from the 100-degree mark.
Ironically, it was on a similarly blistering day almost 30 years ago that Missing Persons and Walsh shared the same stage at the US Festival. This writer's most vivid memories of that concert (May 30, 1983, at Glen Helen Park in San Bernardino) is how Missing Persons was placed in a true no-win situation when that band had to follow just-breaking U2, which simply blew away the massive crowd with one of the most compelling sets ever in Southern California. Walsh, who went on much later that day under cooler skies, delivered a solid set that lacked the power of U2 or David Bowie's impressive finale, yet it was exactly the sort of entertaining rock show he brought to his headlining 75-minute turn in Irvine on Saturday.
A successful member of several classic bands (principally James Gang and the Eagles), the 64-year-old Hall of Famer also has scored with solo smashes along the way. This night Walsh performed a bit of everything in a cohesive and winning set, launching with his 1973 hit "Rocky Mountain Way."
