Teleidoscope

Sat, Feb 02, 2008

Classical Mystery Tour

Posted at 11:01 pm MST to Media

Quotes from this evening: "If you can remember the 60s, you weren't there." and

"If you can remember the 60s, you're probably IN your sixties."

I'm not quite in my sixties yet. I was in fourth grade when President Kennedy was killed,
and I think I was in third grade when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. So I was actually a little too young to appreciate the early Beatles. This is relevant because I just attended the "Classical Mystery Tour" concert.

Classical Mystery Tour is four guys who used to play the Beatles in 'Beatlemania' on Broadway, playing the Beatles, backed by an orchestra, in this case the Boulder Philharmonic orchestra, so the combination can perform ALL of the notes in various Beatles performances as they are heard on the albums. They mostly included songs that had orchestral backups, so the playlist

Songs like "Day in the Life" and "I am the Walrus" are very impressive live. Actually, all of the performances were excellent. I have to say the performer playing Paul McCartney was born for the role: the resemblance was a bit eerie, even allowing for the assistance of the costumes and haircuts and wigs. ('John Lennon' had 4 costume changes, the others had 3. The Sgt. Pepper uniforms were... very colorful.) And "George Harrison" played the Eric Clapton solo from "As My Guitar Gently Weeps" -- they 'apologized' because Eric couldn't be here tonight. :-)

They also said 'Here's something the Beatles never said at a concert: check out our web page."

They did "Hey Jude", "Twist and Shout" and "Money Can't Buy Me Love" as encores. People were standing up and pogoing and swaying and singing along and waving lit cell phones. (I waved my cell phone too: I was never a smoker, so I could never wave a lighter, even when I finally started going to concerts. Cell phones are more democratic: pretty much everyone has one.)

I didn't cough very much during the concert, though I'm still getting over the crud. Thank goodness for Altoids. Of course, coughing during Beatles music is not as annoying to other people as it would be at a normal Phil concert -- I could hardly hear myself coughing.

I bought a CD and a T-shirt.

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