[On location in Orlando, Florida]
I’ve got some time on my hands while at this conference, so I can catch up on a bit of bloggish activity.
I haven’t been to very many concerts before (I’m not including high school or college band/orchestra/choir concerts, I’ve been to plenty of those). But in the last month-plus I’ve added two more to the list. Both were epic: Muse and Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Here’s a list of the concerts I’ve been to:
1. Weird Al Yankovic, Aug 2003, Minnesota State Fair. Yep. Weird Al. At least I’ll always have a fairly unique answer to the icebreaker question of “what was the first concert you attended?” He put on a good show though, and changed costumes between nearly every song. Several of my roommates at Gustavus were huge Weird Al fans, and I went with them.
2. Minnesota Orchestra, Jan 2005, Orchestra Hall (Minneapolis). I’ll count this, because I had to travel and pay to attend. This concert was amazing, especially because they ended with Ottorino Respighi’s “The Pines of Rome,” which is one of my favorites (“The Pines of the Appian Way,” in particular). It was so beautiful, I think I got a couple tears in my eyes.
3. Phil Keaggy, Sep 2007, State Theatre (State College). My church co-sponsored this concert, and I decided to buy a ticket even though I hadn’t ever heard him play. He opened with “Shades of Green,” and my jaw dropped. Here’s a video of him performing it at another concert (he had some different improvisation at our concert, but you get the idea):
Phil Keaggy is without a doubt the best guitarist I’ve ever heard, and it’s going to take a unique and tremendous talent to top him.
4. Guster, Oct 2007, Bryce Jordan Center (Penn State). A small concert, but still fun. They have such a “California” sound, I was surprised to learn they were from Massachusetts.
5. Chris Tomlin & Matt Redman, Feb 2008, Bryce Jordan Center (Penn State). It was really cool to hear a few thousand people praising God together! This was for Tomlin’s “How Great Is Our God” tour.
6. Eric Hutchinson, Nov 2009, Knitting Factory (Spokane, WA). My cousin Jonathan and his girlfriend (now wife) Lindsey asked if I wanted to go with them to a concert while I was visiting them. I hadn’t heard of Eric Hutchinson before they asked, but he’s become one of my favorite musicians. Click here to see the music video for “OK, It’s Alright With Me.” (embedding disabled)
7. MUSE, Oct 2010, Value City Arena (Columbus, OH). I went to visit Alex last month for a couple days, and we took a drive down from Ann Arbor to Columbus [shudder] to see Muse in concert. Alex had already seen the show once before in Detroit back in March , but he loves Muse so much he was keen to go again with me down in Columbus. His one word to describe the concert in Detroit: “EPIC!” Here’s video from the beginning of the concert (not ours, from another place on tour):
Their show in Columbus didn’t disappoint! I’d have to agree with the adjective “epic.” We had floor tickets, and managed to wend our way pretty close to the center, about five rows from the front. There were three towers set up on stage, the bottom half of which was a platform which would go up and down for various songs, so that sometimes the band was playing well above you, sometimes on the actual stage. Each tower also had videoboards all around, which showed tons of different things throughout the show. Combined with the tremendous laser light show, there were lots of visual stimuli. During one of their last songs, they dropped some gigantic beach balls from the upper deck that were painted like eye balls; after a time, they’d explode, showering giant confetti/tissue paper everywhere. And of course the music was great. It was a great, great show! Very worth seeing live! Here are some photos from Alex’s camera (mine was too big to take in):
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8. Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Nov 2010, Bryce Jordan Center (Penn State). I’ve long heard that TSO puts on a great live show, so I knew I should take advantage of them coming to State College. And just like with Muse, the hype didn’t disappoint. I went with Walter and some PSCG friends (a bunch of other meteo folks went as well, but were in another section). I don’t have any photos from the concert (again, I didn’t bring my camera because it’s too big to bother trying to get in), but I’ll try to describe a bit of what it was like. As a start, three of the musicians were lowered on platforms from the ceiling to the stage during the second song, jamming out during the whole descent. There were a couple of catwalks on either side of the stage, which for a couple songs in the second half lowered down so that musicians could hop on and go play halfway out into (and above!) the audience. Lots of head-banging from the guitarists, bassists, violinists and dancers. Musicians running from one end of the stage to the other while continuing to play, and even going out into the aisles in the crowd. Tremendous light and laser show. Fireballs (more fire than I’ve ever seen indoors before). Fireworks (and I don’t mean firecrackers, I mean legit fireworks). Like Muse, it was epic and over the top, and a fantastic live show. Here’s a sample video from a previous TSO concert, to give a flavor of it:
And the show was 2 hours, 40 minutes long — with no intermission to speak of! They started off playing the songs from their Christmas Eve and Other Stories album, and when they got to the last song from that, I noticed that some people got up to leave (presumably to beat the traffic, but what traffic is there to beat at night in State College??). When they got done with that song, they came back out and said they hoped we enjoyed the first half of their show, and that they had a lot more for us. They sure gave us our money’s worth! Moral of the story: never ever, EVER leave a concert early. Those people who left missed at least half of the show!
[end list]
I’d have to say my two favorite concerts were the last two, Muse and TSO, because of the scale and the spectacle of each. And they were only about 3.5 weeks apart! Anyway, those two concerts are definitely two of the highlights of my last couple months before my move to Colorado!