Music

Last night I attended a gig, Taylor Swift at the MEN.
Now, I had a great time but boy did I feel a bit old.

Taylor Swift (2007 pic)

The good bit’s
I don’t really know why I like Taylor Swift. Perhaps subconciously it’s because she’s a nice looking 19 year old, but I’m not sure that is the reason. I do like the music. I’ve always kinda liked contry style music and she mixes this with some really catchy type pop stuff. Songs like “Our Song” and “Love story” are difficult not to like.
The concert was great, she’s not just a singer, but can play acoustic guitar pretty well and did so with some acoustic bits in the set. She got around the audience including one bit on a stage just in front of where we were sitting. The sound was good and well mixed and she did a really good 2 hours worth of material. There were ten costume changes and she certainly looked hot in all of them.

Taylor 2009 Fearless

Here’s a pic from the 2009 tour, to give you a flavour of the video used in the show, although at the MEN the centre screen was a 16:9 format, which was much more pleasing. There were a silly number of guitars (5 at one point) as well as a violin and some other random instruments at some point. For a mostly four piece style band lineup they made quite a full sound.

How I knew I was out of place

Most of the people at the concert, including those on our row (I took the wife, otherwise this would have been even worse) were teenage girls and were screaming their lungs off

The support act was a chap called Justin Bieber who appeared to be about 12 years old (although I suspect he might have been a bit older, but not much). This caused the girls to go mad and scream at an ear splitting volume which hurt my ears.

I was interested in the tech, and that’s sad. They had really nice back projection, projection onto the stage elements and an amazing waterfall effect at the end which was kind of the opposite of inkjet printing but with water drops. It spelled out words from the song whilst she stood under it getting wet… Cool (although not the 360deg version in the video).

I was anoyed by the girls shouting “we love you” every few seconds (well, every few minutes), when there was zero chance that anyone apart from the few rows around them could hear.

Of course, most of this starts to mark me out as a grumpy old man. However, I’m really glad that I went.. and for those who don’t mind a bit of no nonsence feel good music, the kind of people who take busted for what they really are and don’t get cross, then Taylor Swift might just be worth checking out.

Attended a great concert this evening. Ian Tracey playing the three manual organ at my old school.
Now, having played the organ, I had a really good appreciation of his skill. You could tell that he’d taken it by the guts and given it a really good shake. It’s only got a limited range of stops, but he made it sound much bigger than it was. The program was:
* Minuee (VI Concierto par Dos Organos) – Antonio Soler
* Adagio in G minor – Thomas Albinoni
* Chaconne in d – J.S.Bach / Coss-Custard
* Three pieces for Musical Clocks – F.J.Haydn
* Scherzo in G minor – M.E.Bossi
* Modal Suite – Flor Peeters
* Psalm Prelude set 1 no. 3 – Herbert Howells
* Danses (Nutcracker) – Tchiakovsky / Tracey
* Toccata (Sinfonie V) – Charles Marie Widor

My faves were the Adagio in G minor, which was really sweet and expressive. The Bossi, where he beat the organ into submission and emerged triumphant, and of course the Widor, which having murdered it at a few weddings was really fantastic.
He had a great way with the audience and he introduced the pieces with some humor.
All in all, a great night, and I’d love to hear him playing at his home of LIverpool.

Perhaps my agegroup (old as I am!) misses out on the clasical side of things somehow, or perhaps I’m getting old!