Monday, January 4, 2010
The Spin Trans-Siberian Orchestra at Sommet Center, 1/3/10
Posted by The Spin on Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 2:42 PM
The Spin has weaseled, connived, schmoozed and sneaked our way into our fair share of shows over the years. Hell, we even made it into Kings of Leon at the Sommet after initially being refused tickets. So why in the fuck did we have such a massive ass-pain of a time claiming our press tickets to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's 3:30 matinee on a Sunday nine days after Christmas? Your guess is as good as ours, but we think it was because the tickets we suspected were ours were saved under the name "Paul." There's no Paul here.
We finally managed to wrangle a pair of gratis tickets and make our way into the arena as one of the many hammy metal songsters we were to endure that afternoon began some epic ballad about a Christmas wish while garbed as a hapless but large-hearted vagabond. That one probably lasted 24 minutes. Once the house lights came up, we were genuinely surprised to see a nearly full house of grandmas, kids and middle-agers of all sorts. Seriously. Big turnout. At 3:30 on a Sunday nine days after Christmas.
We had forgotten--or perhaps we never knew--just how much of TSO's material included vocals. We're here for the shredding and the laser lights, not for a dude that used to be in Journey's touring company to tell us about "a city after midnight" with a "halo from a streetlight" and prayers being wishes. Alright, we're being too harsh. But it was 3:30 on a Sunday NINE DAYS AFTER CHRISTMAS, and we Scrooges in The Spin department are short on holiday spirit to begin with.
Anyhow, TSO got around to the epic shredding we anticipated, which featured all the hydraulic platforming, sequenced fireball bursts, laser matrices and cheesy synths we'd spent our Christmas wishes wishing for. Everyone onstage Sunday afternoon clearly dwells most supremely in that insane realm where metal meets classical (i.e. technical proficiency to the point of madness), but our fave and total hero was high-jumping, wig-splitting electric-violin wizard Roddy Chong. Dude's a baller.
So yes, Trans-Siberian Orchestra's arena-style holiday jubilation is a bizarre way to spend a Sunday afternoon nine days after Christmas. But did we enjoy ourselves? Well, between the absolutely bleeding-edge, pinnacle-of-modern-technology pyrotechnical madness/pulsating laser lights and the absolutely frozen-in-time, refusing-to-budge-from-1984 slice of orchestral prog-metal that is TSO's catalog, the irony wasn't lost on us. That said, the arena was 100 percent devoid of hipsters this fair Sunday--we're excluding ourselves from that estimate, of course--so it was nice to see people garnering earnest, genuine enjoyment for once. It almost brought a Christmas tear to our eye. Nine days after Christmas.
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