Tuesday Night Was Okay For Fighting, Too

9 November, 2005. 343 words.

Since my computer at work is more-or-less frozen up while it performs a weekly virus scan, this seems like a good time to write something.

Cynthia and I went with some friends to the Elton John concert at the Coliseum last night. Normally, neither one of us would have gone, but since we were invited we thought it might be fun. As it turned out, it was pretty dern cool. EJ played for almost 3 hours non-stop, a rather amazing feat for a rocker of such advancing years. And it wasn’t all slow stuff, either. He played a handful of tunes from his new album, and then launched into hit after hit for the rest of the night.

I was struck by two things during the concert: 1) for a person of EJ’s stature, I thought he had a very minimalist stage setup. The band was pretty basic: besides EJ himself, there was a keyboardist, guitarist, bassist, drummer, percussionist, and a backup vocal group (which wasn’t even on stage for half the show). Talented bunch of folks, too. He had a nice lighting rig which I found to be visually interesting without being distracting and over-the-top. A few videos on the projection screens, but mostly just closeup video of him and the band. In other words, he was letting the music do most of the talking rather than hiding behind a bunch of flash and glitz.

The other thing that struck me, which strikes me at every live event I attend, was how much more vibrant and colorful the lighting is in person. I found it interesting to compare the lighting shown on the video projections versus the real thing. On the screen, the lights looked bland and uninteresting. On the stage, they just leaped out at the eye. Makes me think that video has a long way to go before it truly captures the full spectrum of light that the human eye can perceive.

Anyway, a good time was had by all. Now to see if I can use my computer yet.

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