Comments | laylalawlor: Elton John solo at the Carlson Center! \o/

laylalawlor

Elton John solo at the Carlson Center! \o/

May 30, 2008 01:02

This is the first time he's ever toured in Alaska, and it was FUN! Really, really fun. The Carlson Center, sadly, has the acoustics of a hockey rink -- unsurprising, since that's what it is most of the time -- but it was still a very good show; I loved not just getting to see him perform in person, but the different arrangements of the songs for ( Read more... )

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Comments 6

tulleandtiaras May 30 2008, 14:28:58 UTC

Elton John in Fairbanks. I am having trouble wrapping my brain around that. I can imagine it was a wonderful show.

laylalawlor May 31 2008, 03:40:24 UTC

I know! It's amazing to me that we actually got a show like that here.

acoustic_rob May 30 2008, 15:18:59 UTC

I like it when musicians do something like this--rework an entire concert's worth of songs for solo piano/guitar/sousaphone. What songs surprised you by working in this context? Did any of the arrangements fall flat?

from Sophia acoustic_rob May 31 2008, 04:34:18 UTC

I saw Joe Jackson back in 1984, and he did "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" acoustically, with only violin, piccolo, concertina (or maybe button accordion?) and tambourine for the instrumentation - it was great!

Re: from Sophia laylalawlor May 31 2008, 09:06:57 UTC

Isn't that sort of thing neat? There's just something about live music -- it's not simply seeing the singer in person, it's getting to see and hear them do things with their music that never gets recorded anywhere. I had an absolute blast a couple of years ago when Nanci Griffith did a solo acoustic Fairbanks show in a very small venue, and spent a lot of time between each song talking about how she'd written it and telling little anecdotes about her life.

laylalawlor May 31 2008, 09:01:20 UTC

Hmm, good questions -- which I'm probably entirely unqualified to answer, since my musical knowledge is basically limited to "durrrr, I liked that". One that stood out for me, though, was "Philadelphia Freedom" -- both the piano-only rendition (very different from the orchestral recorded version), and the audience reaction, which was awesome. I would love to have a single recording of the piano-only arrangement of that song; I had to do a lot of hunting on Youtube just to find any recorded version at all, though this one doesn't really catch the other half of the equation, which was the fantastic audience energy. As soon as the audience caught onto which song he was playing, they started clapping out the beat and dancing -- and then there was the lightshow, with pulsing graphics and a spotlight playing down across the audience at the "shine on me". It was just a really incredible thing to be part of; I can't remember going to another concert with as much sheer audience enthusiasm as this one had. (Another fun bit -- while we were ( ... )