Sacrilegious indeed!!! Payne over Wetton!
That is - let me think of something aptly Australian - like preferring Brian Johnson over Bon Scott. (Which I actually do!
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The Victory? He hasn't played that since the eighties, last I saw him was with some white pointy Fernandez type thing. That said, Wetton since his King Crimson days prefers a "low bass, high presence, nothing much in between"-piano wire sound which I'd describe as "activated P Bass sound" so he was probably playing a Victory Artist with the active electronics.
"Would have liked to hear them perform some of the Buggles, Crimson, Yes and ELP songs they've played at other shows."
They did that mostly to bolster their set because of the dearth of material after the reunion when they restricted themselves to playing the first album in full, the second album in part (already recorded under unhappy circumstances) and none of the third album by which time Howe had left the group, but declared to Geffen svengali John Kalodner that he'd play on the record as a session man "only for a king's ransom", which to his surprise Geffen accepted leading him to refuse to play after all "after I had heard the material".
Wetton (ousted from the band for his alcoholism at the instigation of Howe, momentarily replaced by Greg Lake and then returned, his alcoholism still uncontained) and Howe hated each other back then.
Follwoing the reunion, Asia have two studio albums under their "thinking man's Air Supply" belt and don't feel the need to pad the set anymore with legacy covers. That said, the Asia versions I heard of Fanfare for the Common Man, In the Court of the Crimson King, Roundabout and, yes, Video killed the Radio Star were nice and credible, but not slavish to the originals. Yes, Wetton can actually sing Roundabout and play these Squire licks at the same time ...
