The Minnesota: Video Games Live

I know that it makes me a world-class geek that I went to listen to the Minnesota Orchestra playing video game music, but in the long run, I'm pretty ok with it. I got Henry tickets for Christmas to this performance, since he's always raving about the music in his favorite video games and I've been wanting to go to the orchestra for awhile. Seemed like a win-win situation! And I have to say that I was impressed.

My sister told me that a lot of composers love playing video game music because they don't have to cater to students who aren't very good at music--they can write music specifically for professionals and make it as hard as they want. A lot of that came through--the music was HARD and very good. Some of the pieces were familiar...from old arcade games that I used to play on my computer to Mario. Others I had never heard, but they were impressively evocative and often really beautiful. The performance was a part of a tour from a few video games composers who are trying to show people that even though they may not take video games seriously, they shouldn't discount the music and art involved as juvenile. For all that, it was still definitely a pops concert--every so often a costumed character would show up, and there were always video game images playing in the background. A few times, members of the audience participated in the show by playing a game while the orchestra played.

All in all, I'm glad I went. Geeky or not, it was a fun night and I heard a lot of great music.

Bon Jovi Concert :)

Thursday Steamboat Willie and I, along with two other good friends (with much better seats!) went to the Bon Jovi concert. We were in the nosebleeds, but it was still worth it--although I wish we had waited to get tickets, so we could have also ended up with the free better tickets that the other two got! I forgot how much fun those concerts are--I'm pretty sure that even for somebody who isn't terribly interested in their music, it would still be a lot of fun. If you do like their music, it's all the better--they put on a good show, usually around two and a half to three hours of just them.

I'd heard some complaints about this tour from Bon Jovi before we went--people who were upset that he didn't play much of his old music, which is all that a lot of people go for. My experience was definitely not that--he played a good mixture. He also played a lot of songs that I hadn't heard before, but that made Steamboat Willie absolutely ecstatic! She'd already been to 9 Bon Jovi concerts (yeah...she really has!) and heard some of her favorite more obscure songs for the first time live. 

Some of my favorite parts of Bon Jovi concerts:

• Well...the music is a pretty obviouis one. He puts on a very good show, plays a lot of songs and obviously loves to perform.
• Watching Jon Bon Jovi dance. He has almost the same lack of skill that I do, but he is much more exuberant about it! (here's a decent example on youtube!)
• Counting mullets and/or bad 80s outfits. This time, we didn't see any mullets and were severely disappointed. Usually, it's a good game!
• Watching weird performance tricks. This time, the drummer played a couple songs on what looked like a birdhouse and the keyboardist stood in between two keyboards and played one with each hand.