I went to tonight's show with a friend from college, her husband, two sons and a visiting niece. We ran into Vikki, Henry, Jordan, Louise, Melissa, Julie, Dave and Jackie when we were beginning to think about something to eat, and kind of bonded over plates of fried things and the necessity of defending our picnic-table turf from interlopers. The interlopers tended to lope right off, though. Maybe they felt underdressed in comparison to us in our various Al-related finery. And special thanks to our own Elvis for being willing to show his leg tats to both my Friday friend and my Saturday friends. You're a good sport, Dave.
We were a little higher up tonight, in Row F. Still good seats, but not down there in the pit with the other diehards. I made sure the visiting niece got the coveted aisle seat (she didn't know it was coveted, but I think she figured it out eventually).
There was a review in the OC Register of Friday's concert that was, in general, just great,
http://soundcheck.ocregister.com/2010/0 ... ver/33231/ but did seem to kind of overestimate the time taken by video segments/costume changes. So I got all nerdy and persnickety and timed them with the stopwatch function on my cell phone. It came out to about 35 minutes, out of a 2 hour 15 minute show. Less than I was expecting. (I didn't count the Fat video, since that's really more a part of the song, or the jam at the end of Fat, because that, of course, is live music).
There was also a Ticketmaster customer review by some guy who thought Al was lip-syncing. Pfft. Apparently he wasn't sitting close enough to see Al's actual lips. Al & the guys just can't catch a break. They go to all kinds of trouble to recreate music, and get mistaken for karaoke tracks (no offense to karaoke, Kevin!). Al makes every effort to have excellent sound and to sing clearly, and gets mistaken for a lip-syncer. But the customer who made that mistake wouldn't have made it if he'd been to tonight's show. Al's voice was a little rough on a song or two early in the show. It did warm up and get better further in, but it was enough to make clear that this was not a pre-recorded vocal. The idea.
Al came up our aisle during WBUL, so visiting niece got a good look at him. He didn't sing to her, but then he probably doesn't want to look like he's hitting on a 15 year old anyway. She was thrilled in any case. My whole party, in fact, enjoyed the show to the max. I love it when I can bring friends into this experience.
Everybody found the Yoda chant to be both baffling and jaw-dropping. We were amusing ourselves walking out by wondering what the rehearsals for that must have been like.
Another wonderful night. Thanks, Al!
Next show for me: Antelope Valley
