blogging it

Trans Siberian Orchestra

We were pretty jazzed about it. From what we'd seen on YouTube and read in the paper and heard on the radio and tv, it promised to be a really rad concert. When we got there, everyone was waiting outside. I guess that was strike one. Well, we heard from the audience that the show got in two hours late from Winnipeg so maybe that was why we weren't being let in even though it was only 15 minutes from show time. Finally we were all in our seats gazing at a crazy pile of rigging and lighting on the stage and roadies doing final tests on flame throwers and lasers. Pretty neat!
The sound of instruments being tuned in the dark got us cheering then they turned on some lights. The great chunks of lit rigging began to fly upward and the lights started doing nifty things. Shifting, chasing, changing colors. So it went through the show. Lights streaming and dancing, flying and swirling. They even had fake snow that glittered in the color changing laser light! Great nets of LED made up the cyclorama that not only twinkled fetchingly, but also had the ability to display like a giant low resolution LED screen. Oh that lighting designer is a mad genius, no doubt about it. A mad genius with no concern for the comfort of his audience. Do you enjoy being repeatedly assaulted with megawatt strobe lights? Well I don't. My pleasure at the show waned. I was also distracted and disconcerted by seeing tons of lighting rigging raising an d lowering and turning side to side. It kind of looked neat but mostly it just looked dangerous.
Then we started noticing the music. It was great, grand, cliche and sappy. The lyrics were hashed together by a desperate preacher. This dude who didn't know how to read poetry would come onstage and read hackneyed poetry stories that didn't really rhyme, emphasizing the meter so badly you couldn't follow the story if there was one. I know it related to angels weeping over battlefields and cello strains in the darkness. There was a bum who sang like a young man about a bar full of alkies on Christmas eve being transfixed by a mysterious boy. The boy convinces the bartender to go out across the street and give all his money from the register to a tart out there so she could presumably fly home for Christmas... Then he serves up the booze for free the rest of the night.
There was a lovely rendition of Carol of the Bells through which Dan and I gleefully sang "Ding Fries are Done."

Meantime, the stink of sewer kept flooding through and the chill wind of the ventilation system blew the frigid Christmas air across. It was a vain attempt to keep the methane at bay. This must be why they took so long to let us in. The arena plumbing was on the fritz. Yech. It was awfully appropriate for a show which stunk equally bad. Like Limburger cheese and Thunderbird whine it stank and retched it's way through Christian preaching and familar guitar chords ripped off from rock legends. The musicians on stage pranced and posed as though they themselves were artists, rather than studio musicians having a season in the limelight. It had all the trappings of a world shaking rock concert with none of the creativity. The writing behind it was horrible. Some of the singers weren't even on key. Twenty minutes before the flame thrower finale we left. I was sick and tired of the attempt of Christians to co-opt a musical genre born of the fury and passion of discontent. Bad enough they'd co-opted the Pagan Yule and were hammering the myth of miracles, peace, generosity and joy to everyone. It is no wonder to me that suicide goes up at Christmas. When you have all that mythological nicey-nice floating around, but all you personally get is junk mail and macaroni, well it's disappointing.
We did buy a CD before the show began. I sort of regret it but I'm sure there's a few good songs on it. At $20 it wasn't that pricey. It comes complete with a rather thick booklet with yet another smarmy Christmas miracle story. Complete with angels, cynics and miraculous healings of cynics. If you're a Christian family with nerdy teens looking for something hip to usher in the Christmas season, you're gonna LOVE this show. The rest of us, save your nickles for Metallica or something. I give this show a rating of a three dressed up as a nine.