05/30/07 Palace Theatre Waterbury, CT

[Ross Stanley]

Oh yes. I'm so in. Going with my best friend to our first Weird Al show. We got the $44 dollar seats.

[spmahn]

I'm going. Waterbury is pretty dull, but it's not as bad as other CT cities. Bridgeport is in the top 10 for homicides per capita in the US.



-Note: I check this forum every day and set up an account about a year ago. However, I'm technologically paranoid, and so this is my very first post.

Crime wise, Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, and I think New London are worse. I've lived and now work here in Waterbury all my life, and while we may not have a lot of crime, we have a lot more of what would be described as "riff raff". Just a lot of people with nothing better to do then be a bother to others. It's especially bad around the mall, which is where I work.

[Elvis]

Al's played Camden NJ, I can't imagine Waterbury is much worse than that....

You know it's a bad neighborhood when a police officer pulls up next to you and tells you not to bother stopping for the red lights until you reach the highway.

Dave

[DrSteggy]

You know it's a bad neighborhood when a police officer pulls up next to you and tells you not to bother stopping for the red lights until you reach the highway.

Dave

Heh, yeah, I"m sorta glad I never had the Camden Experience.

Jackie

[spmahn]

I just got home from the show. Overall it was a great show, probably better then the last tour, but I do have my complaints. The venue is very nice, and definitely is a rose in a weed patch, but it's much more suited for theater or opera than for a concert. They had these low hanging curtains over the stage which made it difficult to see the screen. Thankfully, they compensated by just making the picture on the screen small enough so no major portion was blocked. My seats were pretty bad, I wasn't going to spring for the 40 dollar seats, and as a result we ended up way in the back on the very upper mezzanine. It also looked like the vast majority of real hardcore fans were there as well, so maybe I'm not the only one who felt ticket prices were too high for this place. I thought the videos that played between songs could have used some more variety. What was wrong with 50 percent chance of rain? The interviews are extremely funny, but they seemed to get a little redundant after a while. Finally, I don't think Albuquerque works as well live as it does on the album, especially not as the encore. It's too long and drawn out and is better suited for attentive listening since it's a pretty lengthy song with a lot of drawn out jokes. Hopefully they'll change it up for the second half of the tour.

On the plus though, he played all the old standards, and all of the good stuff on the new album, relegating the mediocre tracks to the medley. I would have rather heard all of Creep You Out or Confessions and put Canadian Idiot in the Medley, since I feel it's a weaker parody overall, but maybe that's just me. Overall though the show itself was great. The money during I'll Sue Ya only went out to the first two or three rows, probably due to logistics involving trying to rig it up any other way. Al also seemed to get tripped up a few times by people in the crowd during Albuquerque.

The crowd itself was pretty dull, it seemed to be a lot of donors to the theater in the good seats, while the real fans were more toward the back. Not much crowd interaction either, everyone totally missed the ending to Fat, and even during Yoda there didn't seem to be much. It also took nearly half of the Cell Phone Song for people to even "get it".

Before the show, we ate at the Pizza place on the same block as the theater, and sat in the booth in front of Jim and John, but they were having a conversation with someone, so I didn't bother them. Before the show we walked around the back to find the bus, and spotted the Nirvana Cheerleaders having a cigarette, but I didn't really feel much of a need to approach them. After the show, we waited inside for maybe 5 minutes before sneaking around the back to the tour bus. There were maybe about 7 of us who waited about 25 minutes, and then some more people came by afterwards which discouraged me a little, since I figured Al would be more receptive to a crowd of 8 rather then 20. Jim came out first and signed some autographs for people and took some pictures, and then the security guard told us all to get back on the sidewalk which further discouraged me. Luckily, Al came out about 5 minutes later and we were told to get into a single file line. They ushered us over, and we got to meet Al one at a time for a picture and an autograph. I'm not much of one for fame and celebrity, but I must admit I was a little star struck. I got Al to sign my copy of UHF and had my friend take a picture., which I'll post later. As a long time fan of wrestling, I've met a lot of these types of guys over years, but I'd have to say Al was the nicest most pleasant person I've met so far.

So overall it was a great show and a great experience. The venue didn't allow flash photography, and my non-flash photos came out terrible, so none of those, sorry. I'll post my picture with Al tomorrow though.

[JEDM]

I hate people who are sorta "seat fillers" and aren't there cause of Al

[Kristine]

Thanks for the review!
Glad you got to meet Al (and Jim).

[algonacchick]

Thanks for the review, spmahn, and glad you got to meet Al, and Jim.

[DrSteggy]

We had seats in the 7th row..and there was a group of hardcore tour chasers in the 4th row, too...but I agree, the crowd was a little sleepy. Except for this group of little kids off Steve's side--they were having the BEST time, and the band was very interactive with them (to their delight)

I got some good shots, but I chickened out after about Pentiums, as a security guy must have seen me at that point--he came to the end of my row and stared me down. He was also pretty hard on the people with cellphone cameras. Later I saw him taking his own pix with a gigantic zoom lens, so he evidently had his motives for shutting us down

We got to see Al and Jim too....where were you, spmahn?

I will say that downtown Waterbury has cleaned up A LOT since I was last spending a lot of time there!

More later...like Friday....!

Jackie

[algonacchick]

Thanks for your review, Jackie. Can't wait to see the pics you got. Glad to hear those kids by Steve had a good time. I like being by Steve, too.