Tag: Trans Siberian Orchestra

Concert Recollection: A Christmas Shredfest

Since once again SNL is pure crap (with the exception of Maroon 5 tonight), I’m back in post mode.  For a change, tonight we have a recollection from an event that happened a mere 2 days ago.  Norm for these is at least a month or two later.  That is self imposed wanting to give some soak time to see what really left an impression.  If I still remember it then it is probably something that struck me as interesting… and gives an excuse for any embellishments that might creep in ha!  The sad truth of it is two days seems like a month with the pace going on around here lately so it fits the model anyway.

So Thursday night Linda and I went to see Trans Siberian Orchestra.  This has become a traditions of sorts since we’ve made an effort to see them for the last 6 or so years (maybe more).  If I recall, last year we saw their show in the January timeframe which was entirely too late – once Christmas is past, the desire to see Christmas themed shows drops faster than Charlie Brown trying to kick a football.  This year they passed through on the other side of that equation – a week before Thanksgiving.  The merchant bastards have all but destroyed Halloween and Thanksgiving holidays making it more tolerable I guess.  The good news is they promised a whole new show!  So the first question is … have you ever been to a TSO concert?

If you said “No”, then you are probably in for a surprise…. and you might want to call up your shrink since you have apparently started talking back to the web.  If you were like me, you assume any show with Orchestra in the name would consist of curved rows of penguins performing a synchronized ballet with strings and wind instruments playing technically perfect classical music – probably Bach, Mozart and others from the days of cinched up waists and powdered wigs.

Let’s see:

  • Penguins – umm I guess you could call them tuxes but rented from Alice Cooper’s closet
  • Curved rows – there were 8 seats in the corner of the stage
  • Strings – definitely, the traditional kind and the 6/4 string axes
  • Wind instruments – not so much
  • Classic music – yes.. well, technically, just imagine that sheet music being kidnapped by heavy metal rockers, given enough coke to stay up a month straight, percolated in a vat of pure energy and then spit out on a wall of light, smoke and fire.

Get the impression this isn’t your everyday trip to the symphony.  Nope, this is really an all out assault on the senses.  At the beginning of the concert members come out on stage to hand out a huge (literally) check to a local charity.  They have done this ever since they started playing and a nice touch especially in these trying times.  One dollar of every ticket (not the walk ups) is given back to the community – this year it was over $6K for the Children’s Hospital which was very fitting based on the story line of their new show.  The other key part of this pre-concert event is they always ask who has never been to a TSO concert.  I think this is purposely done for everyone in the audience that has seen their show before – it points out the people we should keep an eye on.

These are the people that become either a little panicky or excited the minute the show starts.  Why is that?  Well, that is when the stage starts revving up, the backdrop begins to shimmer, the chillers push out the heavy fog, the light pods raise up high into the air, the digital backdrops begin their bombardment of visuals and the lasers (that’s right.. .lasers) start tracing the stage.  First new item of the show, a huge timepiece begins moving across the stage … spewing fire.  Back to the newbies.  At this point, there is really only two expressions.  There is either absolute panic that they made a wrong turn somewhere and they are about to be sacrificed to some metal god or pure relief that being dragged to this event isn’t going to feel like the dentist.

Hit the jump read and see more of the show!

Continue reading Concert Recollection: A Christmas Shredfest

An Entertaining Night

Just back from the Trans Siberian Orchestra Concert in Peoria tonight.  This is somewhere around my 4th time seeing them and I can tell you they still put on a great show.  I think for the third year in a row we got the West coast version with Al Petrelli.  It appears he previously took a nasty fall off the stage and destroyed his knee.  He had a pretty big brace on it and was moving on it gingerly.  That did not stop him from shredding up the night alongside his wife on the keyboards.  I will not go much into the show since you really need to experience it yourself – especially you like your music fast, in your face and played to perfection.  I did appreciate the fact they changed it up since the last time we saw it.  They changed the dueling keyboards and moved up the “Strat” vs “Gibson” shred-off into the middle of the Christmas story.  A strange place for it, but it worked for me.

There were two interesting aspects of the night I did want to comment on.  First off, we could not locate our seats.  My wife had purchased them at the Civic Center Box Office so we new they were legit.  Unfortunately, the row numbering scheme confused us.  When we got to our section, we headed into the first level concourse and showed the tickets to the attendant there.  He directed us to the first rows in the level above us.  So we headed up there, passed the press box rows and checked out the first row number.  Turns out it was row 9.  We looked at the press boxes and noticed there were only two rows there which on best guess would make it rows 8 and 7.  Totally confused, we went back down and talked to another attendant and explained our situation.  He was confused as well and walked us up to the press boxes and told us to just sit in the second row (our guess row 8 ) and see what happens.  This NEVER works out for me so I went back down and talked to the first attendant and told him we were still confused.  I do not think he actually believed me, but he did walk up to the seats with me and I re-explained the situation.  This time he understood the situation and decided he needed to contact his supervisor.  So we walked back down and located her.  We ALL proceeded back up to the seats and had the exact same discussion resulting in the exact same confusion.  This time the lady told us to go ahead and sit there (I had Linda move down to row 7 which seemed more logical to me) and she would go to the box office and get it straightened out for us.  10 or 15 minutes later she came back and confirmed that we were now actually in the correct seats.  I still think we were in row 7, but the deduction we made is that the rows were wider to fit the tables in so they had to remove a row.  Anyway, we sat in the press box which ended up being a pretty cool place to watch the concert from.  The table actually cut down a bit of the stage view, but you could stretch out and see the rest if wanted to.

About 75% into the concert, we noticed a security guard talking to someone two rows below us (in the lower bowel).  He seemed to be getting upset because the person he was talking to wasn’t cooperating with him.  Eventually a guy about 55 or 60 in a brown sport coat stood up and followed the security guard.  It was just him and he really didn’t say anything as he weaved through the row.  We speculated that it might be smoking or possibly filming but his age threw me off for the latter.  A little later, my wife went out to the restroom.  On her return, she relayed the fact that same individual was out in the hall with multiple security guards and he apparently was holding a high end 35mm digital camera.  Turns out the security guards were forcing him to delete the pictures off of the memory card.  A smart person would have put spares in his coat pocket and periodically switched them out so he at least got some benefit for the effort.

That is it for tonight.  My ears are still ringing a little and my eyes took a beating with the strobes.

Shred On!