Miscellaneous Ramblings.... - Concerts

Concert: Rush (at last!)

nospam@example.com (Colleen Velo) — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:00:00 -0500

After being a fan for so many years of the group Rush, I finally had the chance to see the in concert (thanks to one of my friends getting a sweet deal on tickets). There was no opening band and Rush played from 7:30 pm - 11:30 pm, with only a 15 minute intermission. There was a good mix of the old and new songs to keep everyone happy and it was quite nice to see that after 30+ years of making music, all three members of the group still have it (how many other groups from the 70's can you say that about? ).
Happily, my Nikon binoculars worked fabulously, especially for seeing Neil Peart do his awesome drum solos (yes, there is no doubt that he is a drumming demigod )
It was also obvious that there is quite a bit of creativity (not just musical) within the band. The light show was pretty cool and there were several short outtakes in between songs and a couple of the more entertaining ones was the South Park outtake doing the lead-in to Tom Sawyer. Also, the cartoon dragon that ended up spouting real fire on stage was also a nice touch.
All in all, a very well spent evening and definitely worth the price of the ticket (and how many stadium concerts can you say that about? )

Movie: Standing in the Shadows of Motown

nospam@example.com (Colleen Velo) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:27:00 -0500

Finally had the chance to see a much overlooked movie Standing in the Shadows of Motown. It is a documentary, intercut with concert footage, of The Funk Brothers. The Funk Brothers were an outstanding group of studio musicians that played on every Motown hit, but still remained largely unknown, even though their hits are legendary. It was a very well done movie and I would highly recommended it, especially if you are a fan of music history.

(now if only this movie was available on Blu-Ray.... )

Concert: Casting Crowns

nospam@example.com (Colleen Velo) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:47:00 -0500

Thanks to the generosity of one of our vendors, I (and some of my friends) was able to take in the Casting Crowns concert this past weekend. It was the first time that I had the opportunity to view a concert from private box and it was quite an enjoyable experience .
I was also relatively new to the music of Casting Crowns as well, but I will definitely keep an eye on this group going forward.
( For the record, the Skillet concert was still my favorite one this year )

MPA Circuit Championships

nospam@example.com (Colleen Velo) — Mon, 7 Apr 2008 21:51:00 -0500

MPA (Minnesota Percussion Association) had the Circuit Championships this past weekend and my nephew and I took it in for the first time. It is a state-wide high school percussion competition (although there were some teams from North Dakota and Wisconsin) and it was quite an impressive event. There are four categories that teams are judged by: Performance Analysis, General Effect, Visual, Timing & Penalties.

For the impatient, here are the final scores for the various classes.
Soon I will have my pictures up as well...

Skillet Concert

nospam@example.com (Colleen Velo) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:09:00 -0500

Took in the Skillet concert last night (Thousand Foot Krutch also performed as well as Decyfer Down) at the Club 3 Degrees. This was the first time that I had seen any of the groups in concert (I actually ended up missing Decyfer Down due to parking difficulties, but my friend told me that I didn't miss too much ).

Thousand Foot Krutch was the next performer (after Decyfer Down) up and they performed a good set (nearly all of my favorite songs made it onto their song play list ). I especially liked the rendition of "What Do We Know?" with the lead singer walking through the audience while singing.

Skillet then took that stage and put on a highly energized 90 minute set (which might have been even longer if Club 3 Degrees didn't have to close the doors at 11:00 pm due to the number of under-18 people in the crowd). I have never seen Skillet in concert before, but it was very obvious that they had been performing together for awhile - the band played very tightly together and all of the musicians definitely had great stage presence (the spinning around of various instruments certainly didn't hurt that impression ).
All in all, a good concert. Reasonable ticket prices (since tickets didn't go through Ticketmaster, I could avoid the outrageous additional fees ), good sound, nice venue (they had the air on, so the place didn't turn into a furnace, especially since the concert was sold out ).

TobyMac Concert

nospam@example.com (Colleen Velo) — Tue, 4 Mar 2008 06:49:00 -0600

Thanks to one of my co-workers, I found about the TobyMac concert (the Friday before the concert ), but fortunately was able to score a decent seat - up in the 106 section; not that far up from the stage. Jeremy Camp was the opening act and he was pretty good (a disclaimer: I am not that familiar with his music). TobyMac concert came out after an hour and played for a good while (although I was surprised that there wasn't really an official encore). However the concert was awesome - good sound and definitely good energy on stage.
All in all, time well spent away from work.

Newboys Concert

nospam@example.com (Colleen Velo) — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 06:17:00 -0500

I took in The Newboys concert at Target Center Sunday evening. Overall, I would give the concert positive marks (my ears are still ringing!).

The good:

Seats were spectacular - on the floor, 7th row (right by the walkway)

Kutless rocked!! (I missed the opening act Stellar Kart)

Newsboys' drummer Duncan still has it - the rotating drum solo was awesome!

Newsboys' keyboardist Jeff was using a MacBookPro! (OK, I guess I have to admit that was a pretty geeky observation, but.... )

The bad:

No Phil Joel!! Since he is/was one of my favorite members of the band, I spent the beginning of the concert hoping that he would magically appear from behind the stage.

Somewhat short concert by the Newsboys -- they were done playing by 9:00 pm (I guess this was to offset for the lengthy time to get out of the Target Center ramp -- see below).

30+ minutes to get out of the Target Center parking ramp and I was probably one of the lucky ones (no money was collected on the way in).

I must have been sleeping under a rock for the past couple of months, because the news that he had left the band in Dec 2006 totally escaped me.

Bruce Hornsby in Concert

nospam@example.com (Colleen Velo) — Wed, 4 Oct 2006 06:51:00 -0500

Despite all of the personal stress currently going on, I took a slight breather and went to the Bruce Hornsby concert at the newly remodeled Guthrie Theater. Strange as it seems, even though I am a huge fan of his music, this is the first time that I have seen him in concert. It was a 2 1/2 hour acoustic set with just him and his piano. It was a throughly enjoyable concert (although that sounds almost like an understatement); yet another reminder of what a truly accomplished pianist he is. It was very intriguing to hear both the jazz and classical music training winding its way through his various songs and piano solos. Not many artists can successfully pull off a strictly acoustic set, but Bruce managed to do it with both ease and a very active sense of humor (it was quite entertaining to see his interplay with the audience).

As an added bonus, the ticket price included a free copy of his 4 CD/1 DVD Intersections collection (alone worth $50.00). I have already throughly played out disc_4 of this collection and am busy working on discs 1-3 (I had all the discs ripped and installed on my iPod as soon as I got home from the concert ).
Also, here is the website where you can (legally, of course ) purchase previous Bruce Hornsby concerts.

State Fair (at last)...

nospam@example.com (Colleen Velo) — Tue, 6 Sep 2005 14:53:00 -0500

Finally made it out the Minnesota State Fair for a very short time (since I was on-call and there had been various issues all weekend).
I did manage to see the band Switchfoot in concert at the Grandstand as well and they put on a pretty good show (even though the audience was somewhat dead). I really do need to invest in good pair of binoculars (especially since I am height-challenged ).