The Police in Concert

This has been a summer of shows for me – The Lion King, Indigo Girls, the NSO’s “Broadway Rocks”, and the NSO’s “Dial H for Hitchcock”. But the highlight for me so far has been The Police. (Followed very closely by The Lion King.) I’ll try to write up the other concerts here later, but I want to say a bit about The Police before it fades too much.

I originally bought 2 tickets for The Police’s concert in Pittsburgh. I wasn’t sure who would go with me to the concert, but suspecting that I would drag along poor Andrew. Then I remembered that my aunt Maggie and I sang loudly to The Police on a drive down to the Keys one summer, so decided to invite her. No sooner did I get the words “I have two tickets to The Police in Pittsburgh,” than Maggie was saying, “I’ll go.”

Skipping ahead over our road trip (we totally got “Pixburghed”), and our fun for half a day in Pittsburgh (we really, really go “Pixburghed”), we made our way to the concert venue relatively early. We figured that we’d rather get there early and twittle our thumbs than get stuck in traffic or parking.

The venue, The Post-Gazette Pavillion, was rather nice. It’s an outdoor venue, and there are several food and drink vendors set up in a couple of cul-de-sacs on either side of the stage and lawn. (Maggie indulged in a glass of wine and a beer; I stuck with a smoothie).

The concert itself was awesome! I heard later that the earlier concerts a year ago were a bit…er…well, not terribly good. But, this one was great – they seemed to have pulled it together over the intervening year. They played both Maggie’s and my favorite songs (“Wrapped around your finger” and “Don’t stand so close to me”).

Sadly, our seats were behind tall-boy and big-haired-girl, but there were large screens, so we could see most of what was going on. And, they sat down during Maggie’s favorite song, so we stayed standing and were able to see every minute of it.

As with any moment like this – one that you’d always hoped would come, but not sure it would – it ended too soon. Our trip back to the hotel was another little adventure, but I’ll have to decide later if it merits a blog post…let’s just say that this was the one time that having an airport hotel did not make it easier to find (hee hee hee).

Tags: music

Random Thought

I can’t think of a better way to start a chilly first-day-of-spring-stuck-in-the-office than to listen to Dancing Queen by ABBA.

Tags: music

New Shoes

I’m listening to the perfect song for the day: New Shoes by Paolo Nutini. I’m wearing new shoes today, working on E/PO stuff, and feeling much better about my job for once. Sadly my boy is gone for the week, but I can’t have everything.

Tags: music

Halloween at the Pops

The fruit of all my costume-making labor came to fruition this evening at the Marvin’s Halloween Monster Mash concert at the Kennedy Center. Our picture was snapped by someone from WASH-FM, a local radio station, but we haven’t seen the gallery up on their web page yet. There were lots of kids there, many of them in costume. A few adults were in costume, too, though not a huge number. Our costumes, in my humble opinion, were among the best there tonight.

The concert hall was decorated up for the occasion. All the doors into the Hall were decked with spider webs. The stage had a pile of carved pumpkins, a couple enormous bats and spiders. There was also a skeleton choir. The decorations set a great mood for the concert.

The opening piece was a spooky-sounding string quartet, during which the other musicians paraded through the audience and made their way up to their seats. This was a great chance for us to check out their costumes. The musicians’ costumes were all top-notch. There were the normal suspects: pirates, witches, a punker, a Nat’s player (or fan), etc. Of note, there was a mad scientist, a sumo wrestler, a old, fat Elvis, an Indiana Jones, and a Raggedy Ann with a knife in her belly. There was, however, one witch that looked exactly like the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz (or Elphaba from Wicked). The best costume was the “balloon guy” – he was dressed as a headless guy (i.e. with a jacket that went up over his head), and then in place of a head, he had an enormous, helium-filled, round orange balloon decorated like a jack o’ lantern. Oh, and the best part of the balloon guy’s costume was that he could make the balloon rise or lower, so for a while it was hovering well above the rest of the symphony.

The entire concert was great. Here are a few notes:

• There were a few movie pieces, from King Kong, Psycho, and Harry Potter.
• They performed a couple of numbers from Wicked: The Wizard and I and For Good. The soprano who sang the part of Elphaba in the Wicked pieces was fantastic. Sadly, I didn’t really like the other soprano who sang the part of Glinda in For Good – she didn’t sound as natural in the part, singing almost too deliberately for a Broadway song.
• They played a tango from The Addams Family, after which a girl dressed as Wednesday Addams came out and chided Hamlisch for vilifying ghosts and goblins, her friends. She then sang a sappy love song, which I can’t remember the name of (and isn’t in the program). While the girl did a great job with the song, I couldn’t believe that Wednesday Addams would sing such a song. She’s all about being morbid, and the song didn’t ring true.
• The finale was two numbers from Phantom of the Opera. The singers did a great job with these numbers, but I’m not sure I’m a fan of Phantom. Maybe I should actually see it one of these days.

Overall, this was a great concert. Andrew and I are going to have to look more closely at the Pops schedule and see if there are other concerts we would like to see.

Tags: halloween, music