We’re living in a rather bizarre age. We’re slowing moving from a time of super sizing everything to now super shrinking, cutting back, and so on. Ironically, though, the prices aren’t shrinking and they’re instead going up. Yes, that’s correct; we’re getting less and paying more. Are you feeling and hating it yet?
Don’t get me wrong… I’m all for getting rid of super sizing and of excessive gluttony (or is that redundant? Probably). We Americans do consume way too much and, because of it, we’re also one of the fattest nations in the world. One way or another, though, we’re paying for it. I do have a problem, however, when companies cut back on things to a bizarre standpoint, or they simply decide to both raise their prices while giving less.
One of the establishments that seems to be sticking it to consumers is Bruegger’s Bagel Company. One thing that I’ve always taken issue with in Minnesota is how the better business seems to fail while the lesser wins. A great example is how Einstein Bros. Bagel Company, of which I think, offers a superior product to Bruegger’s, has closed many of their Twin Cities locations, leaving only a handful of shops here and there. Why and how does this happen? It seems that Minnesotans are excessive creatures of habit and simply keep visiting the place they’ve always visited, regardless of actual product quality. This just doesn’t make any sense to me but I’ve learned to live with it on some level. In the meantime, though, we’re stuck with lesser quality.
Before I go any further, I need to call out “my” Bruegger’s, near my workplace, which is located on 2233 Energy Park Dr., Suite 100, in St. Paul. I need to draw a line and say that maybe…just maybe…all Bruegger’s aren’t completely terrible and perhaps it’s only this one. In any event, this particular Bruegger’s is beyond ridiculous and my experiences there have been close to infuriating.
First off, don’t ever order a coffee past 11am. If you do, it’ll be cold…and I mean cold, as in feeling like it’s right out of the refrigerator. This has happened to me twice so it wasn’t simply a fluke. Yeah, sure, I can take it back to work and heat it in the microwave but this is pretty much sacrilegious to any real coffee drinker. I’ve heard the argument that Bruegger’s only brews their coffee in the morning and then it’s kept warm in carafes throughout the day, and by afternoon it’s bound to be cold. If this is true, then why are they selling it? Can’t they at least warn the customer first? No, sorry, this just isn’t right on any level…unless, of course, you’re ordering iced coffee intentionally.
Even worse, I’ve ordered at least four bagels with cream cheese on four separate occasions. Each time, I take it back to the office, unwrap it, and find that there’s literally no cream cheese. Instead, it’s been spread on the bagel like a fine layer of butter. I’ve never seen this in my life from any bagel company. I mean, really?! Have you seen the pictures of bagels with cream cheese on the Bruegger’s website? Yeah, that’s a joke for us consumers, I think, so that we can only dream about actually tasting the cream cheese on the bagel. On one occasion, I actually thought they forgot to put the cream cheese on altogether, and that’s just how lightly it was spread on it. You literally needed a magnifying glass to see it.
And then there’s the price: $2.19 per bagel with cream cheese. Huh? What happened to the $1.59 price that I was accustomed to? How can you justify over two dollars for one lousy bagel with barely any visible cream cheese? I even questioned one of the coworkers on the price and the response I received was basically that it was a great price. Hmm.
Have you had a Brueggaccino, by any chance? I had a coupon for one once so I tried it. It was actually fairly tasty, well put together, refreshing, etc. I then ordered one awhile later and was asked, “Would you like regular or mocha?” I thought about it momentarily until I noticed that the “regular” one is $3.59, which is bad enough in my opinion for a non-coffee specialty shop, but the mocha, for the same size, was $4.09. Huh? And so, just last week I finally asked, “Why do you charge fifty cents more for the mocha?” The employee looked at me dumbfounded, couldn’t think of an answer, and then opted to get the manager. When he arrived, I had to ask my question again. The manager thought about it for a couple seconds and then said, “Well, it’s because I have to add chocolate to it.” He almost said it like it was a given, or like, “…duh…”.
Okay, now, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the “regular” have flavor in it too? I mean, do you go to an ice cream shop and pay fifty cents more per scoop of chocolate ice cream versus vanilla, just because it has chocolate in it? This is the justification for an extra fifty cents? You’re kidding, right?! Call me crazy but I’m just not following the logic here and I can’t help but feel that Bruegger’s is assuming that all of their customers are total idiots and won’t notice or question it. And so, my question is this…does anyone actually ever order the mocha for fifty cents more, and if not, shouldn’t that be giving Bruegger’s the hint?! Maybe I’m alone on this, who knows.
As consumers, we need to start standing up for ourselves and not be pushed around by businesses. It’s time to simply take our business elsewhere. All I can say is bring back Einstein’s…at least their stores are cuter and more enjoyable, even if the prices aren’t. As for Bruegger’s, I think I’ll start purposefully driving 5-10 miles out of my way to a different establishment so that I can actually enjoy some cream cheese.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Natalie Merchant Really Gets It Right...
I had the pleasure of seeing Natalie Merchant at the O’Shaughnessy in St. Paul on July 24th, 2010. Let me say up front that I’ve never been a big fan of Merchant’s solo work. My liking and support of her goes back mostly to her 10,000 Maniacs days, and to a time about 20+ years ago when I saw that band open up for Squeeze at a little theater in Mesa, AZ. It was a night that still sticks out in my mind, where that band completely won me over and made my jaw drop to the floor in a rather embarrassing manner.
I’ve always been a bit disappointed in her solo works. Due to this, I’ve been rather taken aback by my reaction to her new album, “Leave Your Sleep”, a two disc album comprised of 19th and 20th century British and American poetry adapted to music, fully equipped with a lovely booklet. You see, I’ve completely fallen head over heels in love with this album and think it’s quite frankly one of the best albums of 2010.
“Leave Your Sleep” is an example of the kind of work that I think Merchant should have always been doing. It’s an adventurous album, a journey of sorts, that’s both magical, enchanting, stimulating, and quite fun. A wide array of instruments were used with musical styles ranging from folk to jazz to even a bit of Celtic flair. It’s an album like no other that I’ve ever heard.
When I heard that she would be in town in support of the album, I knew I had to be there. It took a bit of searching but I finally landed a 3rd row Pit seat through Ticketmaster. As I always say, I usually don’t go to shows unless I’m in the first 10 rows. In my viewpoint, the show had one of two ways of playing out: she would either completely focus on the new material and then maybe play some of her hits for the encore, or she’d intersperse her catalog of songs together which, I think at least, would be rather weird and awkward. I of course had my fingers crossed for the former.
In typical me fashion, for one reason or another, I ended up running late to the show. I purposefully try not to get to shows too early because about 50% of the time I go alone and I hate sitting there in silence for a long time, twiddling my thumbs and such. So, I try to nonchalantly arrive about 15 minutes early, but on this particular evening, time somehow got away from me.
To make matters worse, I’ve never been to the O’Shaughnessy and so I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going. I was afraid I’d be caught in late-comer traffic; to my surprise, there was none. Instead, upon searching for the entrance gate that was listed on the map from the website, I was greeted with a summertime MN original…road construction! I found the gate sign but it was smack in the middle of two torn up entrances and roads, literally just a couple feet from one another. Both looked like something you wouldn’t normally drive down, consisting of dirt and stones, and there was a visible huge pile of dirt and concrete up ahead. It was completely confusing. Which was the real entrance?! Even funnier, as I was approaching from the north, an SUV was approaching from the south and we were both stopped, confused, looking at one another, trying to figure out which way to go. Being impatient, I just chose a road. The SUV promptly followed me.
About 10 seconds later, I realized I was in maybe the rectory’s parking lot? I don’t know. I spun around as the SUV came up behind me, confused as to where I was leading them. We both exited and then tried the other road, both of us parking in different rows of the lot.
It was now about 3 minutes to show time. I obviously wanted to get to the theater as quickly as possible but where the heck was it?! Just like the parking lot fiasco, there were no signs at all, nothing visible that looked like a theater, and so I was completely confused. I started making my way across the parking lot and ended up by my SUV friends, a young couple that seemed to be as lost as I was. The guy came up to me and asked, “Hey, do you know where the O’Shaughnessy is?”
I looked at him with a faint smile. “You’re asking me?! I lead you into the wrong parking lot!” We both laughed. At least we weren’t alone in our confusion.
I finally found a map of the campus and pointed in the proper direction. It was a bit of a walk but I finally made it. It was now exactly show time. I entered as quickly as possible and once again there were no signs on the walls about where to go. Like I had done previously, I simply choose a direction and hoped for the best. I had my ticket torn and then made my way to the door leading to the very front of the auditorium. I was standing behind 2 women that were also a bit confused. We opened the door together to see that the auditorium lights had just gone out and it was pitch black inside. Merchant’s band had just walked out on stage and the crowd was applauding. At this point, I uttered a mild obscenity, and the lady nearest to me giggled and said, “Shhh!”
Just then, Natalie Merchant came out on the stage and cheers from the crowd erupted. At the same time, I was trying to figure out where the heck my seat was and I was a bit confused. There were no ushers in sight and the only “worker” was the security guard sitting on the stage. He directed me to a row that just didn’t seem right but he also informed me that my seat number was way down on the left side of the auditorium, whereas I had entered via the right side doors. It made sense that I should just walk out the doors and go all the way around the other side.
“Leave Your Sleep” is an example of the kind of work that I think Merchant should have always been doing. It’s an adventurous album, a journey of sorts, that’s both magical, enchanting, stimulating, and quite fun. A wide array of instruments were used with musical styles ranging from folk to jazz to even a bit of Celtic flair. It’s an album like no other that I’ve ever heard.
When I heard that she would be in town in support of the album, I knew I had to be there. It took a bit of searching but I finally landed a 3rd row Pit seat through Ticketmaster. As I always say, I usually don’t go to shows unless I’m in the first 10 rows. In my viewpoint, the show had one of two ways of playing out: she would either completely focus on the new material and then maybe play some of her hits for the encore, or she’d intersperse her catalog of songs together which, I think at least, would be rather weird and awkward. I of course had my fingers crossed for the former.
In typical me fashion, for one reason or another, I ended up running late to the show. I purposefully try not to get to shows too early because about 50% of the time I go alone and I hate sitting there in silence for a long time, twiddling my thumbs and such. So, I try to nonchalantly arrive about 15 minutes early, but on this particular evening, time somehow got away from me.
To make matters worse, I’ve never been to the O’Shaughnessy and so I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going. I was afraid I’d be caught in late-comer traffic; to my surprise, there was none. Instead, upon searching for the entrance gate that was listed on the map from the website, I was greeted with a summertime MN original…road construction! I found the gate sign but it was smack in the middle of two torn up entrances and roads, literally just a couple feet from one another. Both looked like something you wouldn’t normally drive down, consisting of dirt and stones, and there was a visible huge pile of dirt and concrete up ahead. It was completely confusing. Which was the real entrance?! Even funnier, as I was approaching from the north, an SUV was approaching from the south and we were both stopped, confused, looking at one another, trying to figure out which way to go. Being impatient, I just chose a road. The SUV promptly followed me.
About 10 seconds later, I realized I was in maybe the rectory’s parking lot? I don’t know. I spun around as the SUV came up behind me, confused as to where I was leading them. We both exited and then tried the other road, both of us parking in different rows of the lot.
It was now about 3 minutes to show time. I obviously wanted to get to the theater as quickly as possible but where the heck was it?! Just like the parking lot fiasco, there were no signs at all, nothing visible that looked like a theater, and so I was completely confused. I started making my way across the parking lot and ended up by my SUV friends, a young couple that seemed to be as lost as I was. The guy came up to me and asked, “Hey, do you know where the O’Shaughnessy is?”
I looked at him with a faint smile. “You’re asking me?! I lead you into the wrong parking lot!” We both laughed. At least we weren’t alone in our confusion.
I finally found a map of the campus and pointed in the proper direction. It was a bit of a walk but I finally made it. It was now exactly show time. I entered as quickly as possible and once again there were no signs on the walls about where to go. Like I had done previously, I simply choose a direction and hoped for the best. I had my ticket torn and then made my way to the door leading to the very front of the auditorium. I was standing behind 2 women that were also a bit confused. We opened the door together to see that the auditorium lights had just gone out and it was pitch black inside. Merchant’s band had just walked out on stage and the crowd was applauding. At this point, I uttered a mild obscenity, and the lady nearest to me giggled and said, “Shhh!”
Just then, Natalie Merchant came out on the stage and cheers from the crowd erupted. At the same time, I was trying to figure out where the heck my seat was and I was a bit confused. There were no ushers in sight and the only “worker” was the security guard sitting on the stage. He directed me to a row that just didn’t seem right but he also informed me that my seat number was way down on the left side of the auditorium, whereas I had entered via the right side doors. It made sense that I should just walk out the doors and go all the way around the other side.
While I was doing my walk, I ran into the SUV couple again and promptly said, “Why, hello again! I’m still lost!” I then made my way around the left side and through the front doors. I was standing behind 2 couples who were just coming back from the bar area. As we made our way through the door, Natalie Merchant, on stage, said, “Wow…they’re still coming in through the doors.” She was literally looking right at us! As I was trying to make my way to my seat as quickly as possible, she said, in a rather annoyed tone, “Come in, people…the show has started…” pretty much in my direction. How embarrassing! I hate when people arrive late and now I was “that guy”! Ugh!!Anyhow, that was my fiasco in regards to getting to the show and so I had missed Merchant’s introduction speech about the project and such. She had not performed any music up until this point. She introduced the first song which was “The Sleepy Giant” and had only sung about 2 lines when she started coughing out of control. I’ve never seen this before in a show, although I’m sure it happens quite frequently. It was very obvious that her throat had clogged and she very calmly told the band, who was still playing the music without her singing, “We need to start over”. A few moments earlier, a couple more people had entered and sat down in the front row of the theater. Merchant tried desperately to clear her throat but it wasn’t cooperating. After numerous coughs, she did her best to lighten the moment with mild humor. She finally told the audience, “I hate to admit this to you but I should probably be one of those people who should live in a bubble. I think what happened was that someone who just came in had strong perfume and I got a big whiff of it.” Considering this was the first song, I had minor doubts about how the show was going to go. Within a matter of moments, though, the band restarted the song and Merchant’s voice came back as powerful as ever. I must say that she handled the whole thing very calmly and professionally.
From here, the whole regular show, meaning before the encores, was completely focused on the new album as I had hoped and predicted. Merchant talked and explained tidbits of information before each and every song and at times it almost felt like more of a lecture than a “rock” concert. Having said that, it was an absolutely brilliant presentation of the songs and extremely informative, allowing the audience to get a deeper glimpse into the project. Merchant also had a fairly large screen behind her which displayed various slides which she worked herself via a clicker device. There were pictures of the poets themselves, some illustrations from various works, and so on. The pictures of the poets were absolutely fantastic, at times showing off a side of the artist that I didn’t previously pick up on. Most of the slides were black and white and quite beautiful in their own rite. Some actually added a mildly eerie atmosphere that created an unprecedented mood within the auditorium. The presentation, at least for me, gave me a connection to the work in a very remarkable sort of way.
Merchant’s voice, once it was fully back, was simply beyond words through the entire evening, constantly outdoing itself. It filled and echoed around the interior of the theater and seemed as dense as fog over a harbor. It’s interesting because when Merchant speaks to the audience, she uses a rather soft and quiet tone. Then, when she starts singing, the volume and thickness of her voice is about 10 times her speaking voice. The sound in general in the theater was also amazing, probably due to the concrete walls and such. It was mixed perfectly and it really made the music stand out. It was one of those rare shows when all the various elements came together and worked perfectly in unison.Merchant’s persona throughout the evening was also interesting. She completely exudes confidence in everything she does, even coughing, and seems to really speak her mind. She made several comments that made me a bit shocked, one even about how the theater seemed “cold” upon arrival to sound check due to all the concrete, and how she was worried for a bit about how the show would unfold. I believe she even compared the interior of the building to a concrete bunker. Whereas most artists are busy thanking the theater and its’ owners endlessly, Merchant went the opposite direction and I’ve just never heard anyone do that before. The funny part was she was absolutely correct; it does like a bit like a prison in there! But, just as she later pointed out, no matter what it looked like, they ended up making “beautiful music” that evening and the sound was impeccable. So, ironically, I really quite recommend the theater, especially for its’ intimate setting.
There was also an interesting moment when two gentlemen came and sat down in the very first row during the middle of a song. There had been no one sitting there for the entire performance and clearly Merchant had noticed this. She turned around on stage for a bit during the song and then turned back to see these two gentlemen now sitting there, probably like a hocus pocus sort of thing. She did the most hilarious double take, right in the middle of singing a phrase, and then gave a small smile/smirk. I could only imagine what it was that she was thinking and it made me want to wi-fi connect to her private thoughts.
Stand out songs were “Bleezer’s Ice-Cream”, “Adventures of Isabel”, and “The Peppery Man” which simply “rocked” the house. Like only a very small handful of shows do, it was so amazing that it actually brought a tear to my eye. The strange part was that, while I was sitting there like many others in amazement, some people were actually walking out! I couldn’t understand it. Were they late for another engagement? Did they not know or like any of the new material and they only came to hear Merchant’s older hits? If so, didn’t they understand that she’d probably get to those during the encore, so why leave then?! I was a bit puzzled and halfway tempted to follow someone and ask but that would have meant missing the show.The first part of the performance lasted about an hour and a half. After a short break, the screen disappeared and the first encore began. Merchant played four tracks, none of which were the big hits that were probably expected. One track was “Life is Sweet”, quite a lovely rendition that was rather moving. All four songs were a bit slower and more mysterious, if you will, and quite enjoyable. My favorite was “The Worst Thing” from the “Motherland” album which truly held a strange mystique that was quite captivating.
The second encore completely consisted of four of her biggest hits. Like I’ve already stated, I’m not a big fan of most of these tracks but I must say that they came off much more to my tastes using this more diverse band and arrangement. One of the real highlights was Merchant calling local artist Jevetta Steele to the stage, who happened to be in the audience that evening, to help her sing “Kind and Generous”. From what I gathered, Merchant and Steele met back in the 80’s and actually sang on 10,000 Maniacs’ “Trouble Me”. “Kind and Generous” isn’t exactly my favorite tune on Earth but the energy between the two was amazing and it really captivated the entire audience in a random and impromptu sort of way. This ultimately ended the show and what an amazing ending it was, filled with multiple hugs between Steele and Merchant.
It truly was a show like no other. It’s funny because there were so many issues throughout the evening, starting with her voice tickle and then moving on to many forgotten lyrics, misses of portions of songs, etc. In the end, none of it mattered; in fact it literally made the show even more endearing. For any fan of “Leave Your Sleep”, all I can say is that if you have the chance to see her live on this tour, you simply must for it’s not to be missed.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Bill Frisell Still Amazes...
I had the pleasure of seeing Bill Frisell perform last week at the Dakota Jazz Club in downtown Minneapolis. This particular show was billed as “Bill Frisell’s Beautiful Dreamers”, referring to the new album that’s coming next month of the same name. The trio, consisting of Eyvind Kang and Rudy Royston, gave us a sneak peek at the new music.
I never fully know what to expect when I see Frisell live. The only hint I ever get is by looking at who’s appearing with him, and seeing Rudy Royston on the bill tipped me off that it would probably be leaning more avant garde, my personal preference. The show did not disappoint. It was moody, at times slightly bizarre, and other times quite lovely. Frisell really looked comfortable with both the band and the material and it was definitely one of the better shows I’ve seen him do in awhile. The album should definitely be exciting! Frisell was playing a white custom made Tele styled guitar that had a standard Gibson-esque block headstock (I have no idea what make it was).
I never fully know what to expect when I see Frisell live. The only hint I ever get is by looking at who’s appearing with him, and seeing Rudy Royston on the bill tipped me off that it would probably be leaning more avant garde, my personal preference. The show did not disappoint. It was moody, at times slightly bizarre, and other times quite lovely. Frisell really looked comfortable with both the band and the material and it was definitely one of the better shows I’ve seen him do in awhile. The album should definitely be exciting! Frisell was playing a white custom made Tele styled guitar that had a standard Gibson-esque block headstock (I have no idea what make it was).
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Adventures in the Midwest: Grandview...Not So Grand!
I moved back to the Midwest a few years ago after living in Phoenix, AZ, for 21 years. I had held dreams for quite some time of moving to a place that had a sense of respect for buildings and structures that were more than 5 years old. Phoenix is a city where everything is basically brand new and sparkling clean all the time, and if it isn’t like that, even if only after a few years of being around, it seems to promptly be either torn down or remodeled. I was born in the Chicago area and so the Twin Cities area seemed like it would ultimately be a great fit for me.
I really hadn’t bargained for a lot of things that I’ve encountered since moving here, most of which I’ll simply keep to myself (or for another article). Suffice it to say that moving from the West to the Midwest has many more differences than just the age of the buildings. I’ve also found “Minnesota nice” to be a bit of a…well…misnomer. As my sister said to me a few years ago, “I think you’re going to find that you’re a lot more Western than you think.” She was absolutely correct.
One strange example of this is a recent visit that I made to a movie theater in St. Paul called the Grandview Theater. I had driven past it countless times and, although it looked rather simple from the outside, I felt it had the potential to possibly be a real treat. My biggest concern with the theater, though, was that I hardly ever saw anyone actually hanging around the theater let alone going into it. Still, it is located very near a college campus and that could maybe explain it. Perhaps it’s busier during odd hours? Either way, it mildly piqued my interest.
In Phoenix, I was an avid Harkins’ Camelview patron. For anyone that knows the theater, this basically means that I’m a huge fan of independent, foreign, and art films and rarely watch anything mainstream. In the Twin Cities area, I’m a big fan of the Edina Theater. It’s got a cool 60’s kind of feel, sort of like “2001: A Space Odyssey”, and yet is clean, comfortable, and rarely ever completely packed to an uncomfortable standpoint. Their usual customer also seems to be of a more elegant, intelligent crowd, versus having to deal with teenagers wanting to see the latest teeny bopper film. Also, parking is free and the popcorn is top notch, and I think that goes for any Landmark Theatre in general. There are also the Uptown and Lagoon theaters but I’m not a big fan of either simply because of where they’re located and the incredible inconvenience of getting there. For me, the Edina is near perfect, except it’s quite far from where I live.
Anyhow, a couple weeks ago, I wanted to go see “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and the scheduled times at the Edina, as is often the case, were completely inconvenient for me. The Grandview, though, fit with my schedule. I’ll admit I was a bit reluctant at first but, hey, I had been meaning to check it out anyway.
The Grandview Theater is listed as a Mann Theater on the web. I’m very familiar with the Mann Theater brand but I do believe this is a different brand altogether since it’s designated by the name of “Mann MN”. There’s also a short “About Us” page that pretty much talks only about local theaters that the Mann family purchased and owned. Hmm. This acted as a minor red flag for me but I chose to ignore it. There’s nothing like owning a theater and calling it the “AMC Theater”…but oh, it’s not that AMC, it’s AMC Minnesota… Yeah, sure.
I got there early since I wasn’t sure what parking would be like, and again, being an Arizonan, parallel parking still makes me rather nervous since we never really had to do that out there (parking is everywhere and abundant and paying to park is almost completely unheard of unless you’re going to a high profile event). I was pleased to see that I could park almost right in front of the theater and I didn’t have to put money in the meter. It certainly didn’t appear to be crowded but that wasn’t really anything new.
Now, before I continue, please understand that I’m rather into visiting old theaters, seeing structures with history, etc. I’ve spent a ton of time in the L.A. area literally going to old theaters just to admire the interior. This is a bit of a hobby for me and I’ve seen some beautiful places. And so, upon entering the Grandview, I was a bit excited to see what it was all about.
I walked through the door into the lobby and was immediately shocked since there was practically no lobby. Older theaters usually put a lot into this area, making it almost over the top extravagant. The Grandview, though, was already different. To my right was a small counter that angled, forming both the ticket area and the concession stand. Both looked incredibly run down and old (dare I say nasty?). The concession area was suspect enough that I wondered if it was even sanitary, and then I quickly started pondering if I should skip the popcorn, even though it’s one of my true passions in life.
There were 3 college students working the combination ticket/concession area. They were deep in conversation when I entered through the doors and basically looked at me with a “what do you want?” sort of look. I truly felt like I was interrupting and nearly apologized.
I purchased a ticket for “Dragon Tattoo” and the girl handed me my ticket stub. Since she didn’t offer any direction as to where I should go, meaning what theater and in what direction, I assumed it must be self explanatory, no? I turned around and there was a large theater right in front of me. I was looking for a sign that read what film would be playing in this particular theater but there wasn’t any. I couldn’t find another theater, though, and so, maybe this was the only movie playing at this time? I wasn’t really sure. In any event, I entered the theater.
I was immediately hit with the scent of urine from the back rows. Wow! It was a true “grand” scent! The first thing you notice about this theater is that it’s completely red, kind of like the scene in the movie “The Shining”…you know, after the elevator doors open up and all the blood runs out into the lobby? Or, maybe a better comparison is the infamous red room in the basement in “The Amityville Horror”? Either way, there’s a heck of a lot of red going on, enough to make me nervous! The theater also doesn’t look like your typical movie theater of the era at all but instead resembles a sort of redone dance hall. The room is really long, whereas most theaters are wide, and I mean really, really long! I sat about midway and then realized just how tiny the screen was for the length of the room; I decided to move up closer. I’ve never seen such a small screen in such a long room. It was like watching my family’s old 25” rabbit eared TV in our basement back from the 70’s.
After sitting down, I started to take in my surroundings. Strangely, I was the only person in the theater and I sat there looking around, laughing to myself internally, a bit dumbfounded. A few moments later, 2 college aged girls came in and sat a few rows in front of me. It was then that I noticed that the screen was showing the usual advertisements. This is pretty normal today except for the fact that the screen was so blurry that you couldn’t read anything on it! It was quite comical, to say the least. I was trying to read the phone numbers for the various businesses and couldn’t even make them out. Stranger yet, some of the advertisements were just downright bizarre and quite laughable, that is, when you could make out a word here or there.
The ceiling was very high and in a strange rounded sort of shape. It should be said that the theater has nothing ornate about it: there are no carvings, nothing really made of wood or anything. It’s about as plain as can be, in my opinion, and quite…well, hideous, really. It was then that I heard the popcorn popping. Ahh! Well, at least the corn will be fresh and not sitting in that nasty looking bin for who knows how long!
I left the theater, glanced around again for any sign of another theater, purchased my popcorn and coke, and then sat back down. Still, no one else had shown up. The movie was now scheduled to start within the next few minutes.
It was then that I kept hearing short bursts of talking coming from the lobby, doors opening and closing, but no one ever entered the theater. Was I in the wrong theater indeed? And, if I was, where the heck was the other theater? Why was there no sign, and more importantly why didn’t they tell me when I got the ticket? I was most definitely confused. I decided to wait until exactly 2 minutes after the scheduled start time. If the movie previews hadn’t begun, I would brave the lobby one more time and seek help.
After the two minutes passed with no film, I went back to the ticket counter. Once again, the college girl looked at me like, “Um, what do you want now??” I asked, pointing in the direction of the only theater in sight, “Is this the theater for ‘Dragon Tattoo’?” She continued to chew her gum, roll her eyes and barely make any eye contact, and said, “No, that’s upstairs.” “Oh,” I said, and then realized I had no idea where upstairs was! Sheepishly, I asked, “So, how do I get up there?” “It’s over there,” she replied, pointing towards the main theater. I still had no idea what she was talking about but clearly I wasn’t getting any help out of this person!
I reluctantly walked back to the main theater and noticed a strange looking open door to the right. It really more or less resembled a service door, or something that a customer shouldn’t be entering. Again, there was no sign anywhere saying “Theater - this way!!!” or anything about a movie playing. I decided to enter it since this had to be it, right?
I walked through the doorway and found it to be very dark inside. I realized that it was actually a small stairway that immediately turned to the left. There were tiny little lights on the wall, about the size of clear white Christmas lights, and that was about it. I could hear voices, though, so I figured I must be heading in the right direction, or else I was about to be the uninvited guest crashing someone’s party or conference!
I continued stepping upwards with absolutely no idea where the heck I was going and found another turn to the left. Two seconds later, I popped my head up above a short wall at the end of the stairs to find that there was small audience looking at me. I was completely disoriented momentarily. What the hell?! I looked behind me and there was the movie screen, already playing the movie. The stairwell popped me out at the front of the theater, not the back!
Seeing that the movie was already playing, meaning there evidently weren’t any previews, I sat in the first and most accessible seat I could find which was on the right side of the theater. After about one moment I realized this wasn’t going to work. You see, this theater is exactly on top of the other one, and whereas the ceiling of the main theater is rounded, well, so is the floor of this theater. The real difference, though, is whereas the other was extremely long, this one was extremely short with only about 10 rows, and yet the same width. The screen in this little theater was huge for the size of the room, so much so that when watching a movie with subtitles, the words are basically on the floor from your eye’s perspective. Sitting in the side sections meant that you could barely read the subtitles. Geesh!
I strategically moved to the center section as soon as I found a seat that I could easily get into without interfering with other movie watchers. It was in the last row, which again, isn’t very far back. The next oddity I noticed was that the ceiling was only a couple feet above my head which felt really odd, especially since the screen was much higher than the ceiling above the audience. What kind person builds this sort of place???
The topper, though, was that there was a very large rectangular vent in the middle of this low ceiling. The air conditioner kicked on from this vent about every 5 minutes and ran for 10 minutes at a time. It was not only extremely noisy but was blowing air at a furious pace, to the point that I had the equivalent of a very cold ocean breeze blowing directly in my face for 2 ½ hours of a movie. I think this might have been the only vent in the room, hence why it seemed to be blowing at max power. Considering where it was positioned and how low the ceiling was, I think it’s impossible to not feel this vent no matter where you sit in the middle section of this theater.
Given all of that, the movie was decent and I survived! It was truly an experience but not the kind I, um, had bargained for. Also, as it turned out, the main theater that I was originally sitting in was playing “Ironman 2” that evening. Eeew! Talk about horror! I felt like I needed a shower after just sitting in the theater let alone potentially watching that movie!
And now, let’s tie this all together… In Phoenix, we had a couple of rather cool theaters from the 50’s and 60’s era, one called Cine Capri and the other the Kachina. Both were sold and torn down, mostly because they were “old”. These were both pretty cool places, though, and rather unique. Cine Capri especially was very well loved and respected by the whole town and it was a real tragedy when Dan Harkins sold out and let it be torn down for some new high rise office buildings.
Out here in Minnesota, though, you’ve got somewhere like the Grandview, which is literally anything but ‘grand’ or a ‘view’ and it’s still standing! So, it just goes to show the opposite extremes from different parts of the country. Even scarier, there are a few user reviews on various websites talking about the Grandview Theater. One person even said that it’s a great “art deco theater”. I can only assume this person has no clue what that term means because there’s nothing art deco about the Grandview in any shape or form! From the reviews, it seems that many locals like the Grandview. Um…I guess it’s a matter of taste and to each his own???
Take my advice: if you want to see some really beautiful old movie theaters, try Los Angeles or Chicago. If you feel like being a part of the Amityville Horror, the Grandview is definitely your place!
I really hadn’t bargained for a lot of things that I’ve encountered since moving here, most of which I’ll simply keep to myself (or for another article). Suffice it to say that moving from the West to the Midwest has many more differences than just the age of the buildings. I’ve also found “Minnesota nice” to be a bit of a…well…misnomer. As my sister said to me a few years ago, “I think you’re going to find that you’re a lot more Western than you think.” She was absolutely correct.
One strange example of this is a recent visit that I made to a movie theater in St. Paul called the Grandview Theater. I had driven past it countless times and, although it looked rather simple from the outside, I felt it had the potential to possibly be a real treat. My biggest concern with the theater, though, was that I hardly ever saw anyone actually hanging around the theater let alone going into it. Still, it is located very near a college campus and that could maybe explain it. Perhaps it’s busier during odd hours? Either way, it mildly piqued my interest.
In Phoenix, I was an avid Harkins’ Camelview patron. For anyone that knows the theater, this basically means that I’m a huge fan of independent, foreign, and art films and rarely watch anything mainstream. In the Twin Cities area, I’m a big fan of the Edina Theater. It’s got a cool 60’s kind of feel, sort of like “2001: A Space Odyssey”, and yet is clean, comfortable, and rarely ever completely packed to an uncomfortable standpoint. Their usual customer also seems to be of a more elegant, intelligent crowd, versus having to deal with teenagers wanting to see the latest teeny bopper film. Also, parking is free and the popcorn is top notch, and I think that goes for any Landmark Theatre in general. There are also the Uptown and Lagoon theaters but I’m not a big fan of either simply because of where they’re located and the incredible inconvenience of getting there. For me, the Edina is near perfect, except it’s quite far from where I live.
Anyhow, a couple weeks ago, I wanted to go see “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and the scheduled times at the Edina, as is often the case, were completely inconvenient for me. The Grandview, though, fit with my schedule. I’ll admit I was a bit reluctant at first but, hey, I had been meaning to check it out anyway.
The Grandview Theater is listed as a Mann Theater on the web. I’m very familiar with the Mann Theater brand but I do believe this is a different brand altogether since it’s designated by the name of “Mann MN”. There’s also a short “About Us” page that pretty much talks only about local theaters that the Mann family purchased and owned. Hmm. This acted as a minor red flag for me but I chose to ignore it. There’s nothing like owning a theater and calling it the “AMC Theater”…but oh, it’s not that AMC, it’s AMC Minnesota… Yeah, sure.
I got there early since I wasn’t sure what parking would be like, and again, being an Arizonan, parallel parking still makes me rather nervous since we never really had to do that out there (parking is everywhere and abundant and paying to park is almost completely unheard of unless you’re going to a high profile event). I was pleased to see that I could park almost right in front of the theater and I didn’t have to put money in the meter. It certainly didn’t appear to be crowded but that wasn’t really anything new.Now, before I continue, please understand that I’m rather into visiting old theaters, seeing structures with history, etc. I’ve spent a ton of time in the L.A. area literally going to old theaters just to admire the interior. This is a bit of a hobby for me and I’ve seen some beautiful places. And so, upon entering the Grandview, I was a bit excited to see what it was all about.
I walked through the door into the lobby and was immediately shocked since there was practically no lobby. Older theaters usually put a lot into this area, making it almost over the top extravagant. The Grandview, though, was already different. To my right was a small counter that angled, forming both the ticket area and the concession stand. Both looked incredibly run down and old (dare I say nasty?). The concession area was suspect enough that I wondered if it was even sanitary, and then I quickly started pondering if I should skip the popcorn, even though it’s one of my true passions in life.
There were 3 college students working the combination ticket/concession area. They were deep in conversation when I entered through the doors and basically looked at me with a “what do you want?” sort of look. I truly felt like I was interrupting and nearly apologized.
I purchased a ticket for “Dragon Tattoo” and the girl handed me my ticket stub. Since she didn’t offer any direction as to where I should go, meaning what theater and in what direction, I assumed it must be self explanatory, no? I turned around and there was a large theater right in front of me. I was looking for a sign that read what film would be playing in this particular theater but there wasn’t any. I couldn’t find another theater, though, and so, maybe this was the only movie playing at this time? I wasn’t really sure. In any event, I entered the theater.
I was immediately hit with the scent of urine from the back rows. Wow! It was a true “grand” scent! The first thing you notice about this theater is that it’s completely red, kind of like the scene in the movie “The Shining”…you know, after the elevator doors open up and all the blood runs out into the lobby? Or, maybe a better comparison is the infamous red room in the basement in “The Amityville Horror”? Either way, there’s a heck of a lot of red going on, enough to make me nervous! The theater also doesn’t look like your typical movie theater of the era at all but instead resembles a sort of redone dance hall. The room is really long, whereas most theaters are wide, and I mean really, really long! I sat about midway and then realized just how tiny the screen was for the length of the room; I decided to move up closer. I’ve never seen such a small screen in such a long room. It was like watching my family’s old 25” rabbit eared TV in our basement back from the 70’s.
After sitting down, I started to take in my surroundings. Strangely, I was the only person in the theater and I sat there looking around, laughing to myself internally, a bit dumbfounded. A few moments later, 2 college aged girls came in and sat a few rows in front of me. It was then that I noticed that the screen was showing the usual advertisements. This is pretty normal today except for the fact that the screen was so blurry that you couldn’t read anything on it! It was quite comical, to say the least. I was trying to read the phone numbers for the various businesses and couldn’t even make them out. Stranger yet, some of the advertisements were just downright bizarre and quite laughable, that is, when you could make out a word here or there.
The ceiling was very high and in a strange rounded sort of shape. It should be said that the theater has nothing ornate about it: there are no carvings, nothing really made of wood or anything. It’s about as plain as can be, in my opinion, and quite…well, hideous, really. It was then that I heard the popcorn popping. Ahh! Well, at least the corn will be fresh and not sitting in that nasty looking bin for who knows how long!
I left the theater, glanced around again for any sign of another theater, purchased my popcorn and coke, and then sat back down. Still, no one else had shown up. The movie was now scheduled to start within the next few minutes.
It was then that I kept hearing short bursts of talking coming from the lobby, doors opening and closing, but no one ever entered the theater. Was I in the wrong theater indeed? And, if I was, where the heck was the other theater? Why was there no sign, and more importantly why didn’t they tell me when I got the ticket? I was most definitely confused. I decided to wait until exactly 2 minutes after the scheduled start time. If the movie previews hadn’t begun, I would brave the lobby one more time and seek help.
After the two minutes passed with no film, I went back to the ticket counter. Once again, the college girl looked at me like, “Um, what do you want now??” I asked, pointing in the direction of the only theater in sight, “Is this the theater for ‘Dragon Tattoo’?” She continued to chew her gum, roll her eyes and barely make any eye contact, and said, “No, that’s upstairs.” “Oh,” I said, and then realized I had no idea where upstairs was! Sheepishly, I asked, “So, how do I get up there?” “It’s over there,” she replied, pointing towards the main theater. I still had no idea what she was talking about but clearly I wasn’t getting any help out of this person!
I reluctantly walked back to the main theater and noticed a strange looking open door to the right. It really more or less resembled a service door, or something that a customer shouldn’t be entering. Again, there was no sign anywhere saying “Theater - this way!!!” or anything about a movie playing. I decided to enter it since this had to be it, right?
I walked through the doorway and found it to be very dark inside. I realized that it was actually a small stairway that immediately turned to the left. There were tiny little lights on the wall, about the size of clear white Christmas lights, and that was about it. I could hear voices, though, so I figured I must be heading in the right direction, or else I was about to be the uninvited guest crashing someone’s party or conference!
I continued stepping upwards with absolutely no idea where the heck I was going and found another turn to the left. Two seconds later, I popped my head up above a short wall at the end of the stairs to find that there was small audience looking at me. I was completely disoriented momentarily. What the hell?! I looked behind me and there was the movie screen, already playing the movie. The stairwell popped me out at the front of the theater, not the back!
Seeing that the movie was already playing, meaning there evidently weren’t any previews, I sat in the first and most accessible seat I could find which was on the right side of the theater. After about one moment I realized this wasn’t going to work. You see, this theater is exactly on top of the other one, and whereas the ceiling of the main theater is rounded, well, so is the floor of this theater. The real difference, though, is whereas the other was extremely long, this one was extremely short with only about 10 rows, and yet the same width. The screen in this little theater was huge for the size of the room, so much so that when watching a movie with subtitles, the words are basically on the floor from your eye’s perspective. Sitting in the side sections meant that you could barely read the subtitles. Geesh!
I strategically moved to the center section as soon as I found a seat that I could easily get into without interfering with other movie watchers. It was in the last row, which again, isn’t very far back. The next oddity I noticed was that the ceiling was only a couple feet above my head which felt really odd, especially since the screen was much higher than the ceiling above the audience. What kind person builds this sort of place???
The topper, though, was that there was a very large rectangular vent in the middle of this low ceiling. The air conditioner kicked on from this vent about every 5 minutes and ran for 10 minutes at a time. It was not only extremely noisy but was blowing air at a furious pace, to the point that I had the equivalent of a very cold ocean breeze blowing directly in my face for 2 ½ hours of a movie. I think this might have been the only vent in the room, hence why it seemed to be blowing at max power. Considering where it was positioned and how low the ceiling was, I think it’s impossible to not feel this vent no matter where you sit in the middle section of this theater.
Given all of that, the movie was decent and I survived! It was truly an experience but not the kind I, um, had bargained for. Also, as it turned out, the main theater that I was originally sitting in was playing “Ironman 2” that evening. Eeew! Talk about horror! I felt like I needed a shower after just sitting in the theater let alone potentially watching that movie!
And now, let’s tie this all together… In Phoenix, we had a couple of rather cool theaters from the 50’s and 60’s era, one called Cine Capri and the other the Kachina. Both were sold and torn down, mostly because they were “old”. These were both pretty cool places, though, and rather unique. Cine Capri especially was very well loved and respected by the whole town and it was a real tragedy when Dan Harkins sold out and let it be torn down for some new high rise office buildings.
Out here in Minnesota, though, you’ve got somewhere like the Grandview, which is literally anything but ‘grand’ or a ‘view’ and it’s still standing! So, it just goes to show the opposite extremes from different parts of the country. Even scarier, there are a few user reviews on various websites talking about the Grandview Theater. One person even said that it’s a great “art deco theater”. I can only assume this person has no clue what that term means because there’s nothing art deco about the Grandview in any shape or form! From the reviews, it seems that many locals like the Grandview. Um…I guess it’s a matter of taste and to each his own???
Take my advice: if you want to see some really beautiful old movie theaters, try Los Angeles or Chicago. If you feel like being a part of the Amityville Horror, the Grandview is definitely your place!
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Marillion Weekend, April 3-5, 2009 - Part 4 of 4
Sunday Night’s Performance, April 5th, 2009 at Theatre L’Olympia, Montreal, Quebec
(For anyone interested in hearing some of Marillion’s work, you can go directly to their website at http://www.marillion.com/music/racket/crash.htm and either have a free CD sent to you or you can simply download it…again, all for free. What have you got to lose?)
(NOTE: All quotes listed in these articles are to the very best of my memory and are not to be taken verbatim. Set lists are also via memory, and whereas I’m pretty confident that I have all the songs listed here, the nightly order might be slightly out of whack.)
Sunday, During the Day
Sunday began a bit earlier than Saturday had, thankfully, but I still had a late enough start that I opted to skip breakfast, although skipping my morning coffee wasn’t an option. I decided that I would attempt to try and see some of Montreal but would take it easy due to once again not feeling the greatest. It basically seemed like I only felt well during the shows themselves; the rest of the time I felt under the weather.
My first stop of the day was to go to a place that I had passed the previous day. Their sign was in a more readable half French/half English style and looked like the Montreal equivalent to a White Castle sort of establishment. They boasted very clearly that they had both poutine and tofu hot dogs and so I felt that was a pretty safe option for a vegetarian like myself. I had read in my tour guide that poutine was considered “the dish” of Montreal, at least in a fast food sort of way. From what I had gathered, poutine must mean something like “a mess” in French and it consisted of greasy french fries covered with gravy, and then topped with cheese curds. I couldn’t resist! I had also never had a tofu hot dog anywhere except at home since I’ve never seen them on a menu prior to this.
The place was called LaFleur’s, and even though a different establishment was voted the tops for poutine, that place more or less scared me a way for a variety of reasons. LaFleur’s, though, looked less chaotic, easier to negotiate with the staff in the event of a language barrier, and so on. I ordered my food and it rang up as 2.59 Canadian dollars. No, that couldn’t be right since the sign said it was in the 7.99 range. Ah, here we go! Luckily, we got it straightened out and I waited patiently for my food.
To my shock, it was really not bad at all. They were probably the best tofu dogs I had ever had, better than anything I had ever made, and the buns were absolutely bizaree…kind of flat-like in nature and yet really tasty since they were more crisp. The poutine wasn’t bad either, although a mess it certainly was! I couldn’t find a fork so I went at it with my fingers and quickly had it everywhere.
After leaving LaFleur’s and attempting to clean my hands of gravy, I took the Metro up two stations, further than I had previously gone, and embarked on a rather lengthy walk to purchase a homemade bagel right out of the oven for a whopping 65 cents. That also was pretty amazing although the place is strictly a bakery and does not garnish the bagels at all, meaning with cream cheese or what have you. Considering I had just eaten a little while earlier that more or less worked itself out.
I was beginning to really tire out and made my way back to the Metro station. Now, up until this time, every Metro station I had been to had an attendant on duty which was good since I needed to flash my transit pass in order to get through the turnstile. I’m not sure why they don’t have these passes setup for their machines but alas they do not. Feeling pretty exhausted, I entered the Metro station to find no attendant on duty, nor was there even a place for one. Uh oh… I thought, well, maybe I can just buy a one way pass for the moment from the machine. There were 2 issues with this brilliance: a) the machine only seemed to be in French and b) I was able to translate that the machine was out of order regardless. Um, so, what do you do now? You do the only thing you can do…walk to the next Metro station. Ugh.
Luckily, it wasn’t too terribly far but I was near ready to collapse by the time I got there. I now had two choices: venture out and do a ton of walking in order to sightsee, or, return to the hotel and just relax and take it easy until show time. I thought about it while I was waiting for the train to arrive. It quickly became apparent judging from the fatigue that I was feeling that any major sightseeing in Montreal wasn’t going to be happening and that I should instead just take it easy.
The train arrived and it was already pretty crowded. I barely made my way in to the standing area and very quickly noticed a terribly strong aroma of, well, like day old salami or sausage, hanging in the air. It was one of those uncomfortable moments when obviously everyone smelled it but no one knew where or what it was coming from, so everyone looks around kind of nervously. The smell was unbearable, especially to a vegetarian. Could it be someone’s breath? Who breathes that heavy anyhow? Was it on someone’s clothes or something? How would you get that sort of smell anyhow…by rolling around in sausage? The more I thought about it the less I wanted to know. Just then, the train doors shut. I was now locked in with the odor and the sausage offender. I tried to focus elsewhere but it was gagging. The smell was so overpowering that I casually scanned the various passengers in the vicinity, half expecting to see a large 6 ft tall sausage man ala Oscar Meyer, standing and holding on to the railing, waving and smiling at people.
As soon as the doors opened at my stop, I exited as quickly as possible. Luckily, I had to switch train lines in order to get back so the ride didn’t take long. I can’t tell you how grateful I was to be rid of the salami sucker.
Since I had decided to lay low the rest of the day, I opted to sweeten the deal by overshooting my usual stop by 2 stations and grabbing a piece of cheesecake and a coffee at an establishment ironically named Calories. Yeah, talk about guilt trip while eating! I ended up getting a berry cheesecake but I think I would have been more pleased with the straight up plain. I mildly contemplated getting one for the road but, well, let’s not be too overzealous.
After this, I returned to the hotel and just collapsed on the bed for awhile. I flipped channels on the TV and the best I could find to watch was the movie “Mousehunt”. I considered myself lucky since 70% of the channels were in French. I also had briefly thought about going to see a movie at a theater but what if it was only in French? Again, most normal people could probably navigate easily around these things by asking questions and such but, well, I’m not really normal in that sort of way, if you haven’t already noticed.
A few hours passed and the final show was looming on the horizon. I wasn’t too terribly hungry but I knew I couldn’t last the whole evening without eating. I decided to just venture across the street to a nearby Mediterranean take out place and eat it leisurely back in the hotel room. A little while later, I took the obligatory Advil in preparation for the evening’s show and prepared myself.
I left slightly earlier this night, thinking that I’d try and get there before any music began. I walked into the Metro station and headed toward the booth where the attendant worked. As I did this, I noticed that the attendant was actually leaving the booth and walking away. Mild panic started brewing within me…here we go again! I started casually following him, to see where he was going, and he seemed a little nervous by this. He took the corner and as I rounded it, he was gone! At first I thought he disappeared but then I noticed some painted over service doors that were barely noticeable. Either way, he was now out of reach so I went back to the booth to find a large sign in the window that was, of course, completely in French.
I stood there, frowning, trying to find any sort of clue in regards to what the sign actually said. I looked for something with numbers, ala “…be back in 5 minutes…” Nothing. In fact, there were a lot of words on the sign so that didn’t seem promising. As I started to weigh my options in regard to whether it was a “be back soon” vs. “closed for the evening” sort of sign, I then figured that maybe another English speaking person would come along and translate. Someone did come along…an older lady, possibly even homeless, who took one look at the sign and started ranting and raving in French something I can only imagine. She didn’t seem like the right one to ask for the interpretation. So, now, not only was I lost on what the sign said but I also had a lunatic yelling while walking in mild circles around me. Great!
The clock was also ticking. So much for being early! I set a deadline and figured I’d give him 10 minutes to return or else I’d start walking. After about seven minutes, he did return, looking more relaxed. It was probably a bathroom break…which would explain a lot!
I quickly arranged things so that I could get through the turnstile right away. This was smart since the lady immediately started up some sort of mild argument with the attendant right behind me. I did my best to get away and headed towards the train as quickly as I could.
Sunday Night Show
As much as I planned to arrive early, I ended up arriving at just about the same time as the previous two nights. This ended up being fine since, for some odd reason, even though I had allowed ample “relief” time before this, a bathroom break was now at the top of the list of things to do upon entering the theater.
Now, where’s the bathroom? I figured it was down below and started following signs with an arrow and some sort of verbiage in French above it. After following this path around and down a staircase, I discovered this was instead where the coat check was. The two coat check attendants looked bored out of their skulls and immediately perked up as I came around the corner. Upon asking where the bathroom was located, neither of them spoke English and so a mild exchange of confusion broke out for a few seconds. Someone from the back was called up and explained that the bathroom was actually located in the balcony level. Hmm, interesting!
I made my way upstairs and into the restroom. I could hear music playing now so someone was clearly on stage but it was obviously prerecorded since it was the version of “Roxanne” from the film “Moulin Rouge”. What the heck were they doing down there? I heard cheers, and then silence, and then cheers. I couldn’t figure it out, all the while the music was blaring in the restroom at a very unnecessarily loud volume.
After emerging from the restroom, I made my way back downstairs and into the usual area where I had stood previously. I now understood what the music and cheers were about…there were two people on stage doing some sort of magician act. Odd! Even more bizarre, as soon as I came to a stop in my usual spot, the music and the act also ended so it only lasted about a whole 5 minutes. Everyone around me seemed to have an “okay, what the heck was that all about?” sort of look on their faces, including myself.
Not long after that, John Wesley came out and did an opening set. He’s basically just about always the opening act for Marillion whenever they do shows in the U.S. so most of the audience is usually already familiar with him. He is pretty good and was no different on this night, and his guitar work really does shine. I was really impressed with how light of a touch he had with his acoustic and yet his playing was super strong.
We then went through the usual shtick, with the slideshow in the background while the crew prepared the stage. Even though they had very little to clear off this night since John Wesley played alone acoustically, for some reason it took slightly longer to get the band on the stage.
Marillion emerged and started the final night’s performance with “A Few Words for the Dead”, the last track on the “Radiation” album. Lead singer Steve Hogarth (H) was wearing an interesting drape-like outfit that looked of Eastern decent. It was an interesting choice of song to open a set since it’s kind of slow in the beginning. To make up for it, they next launched into “This Town”, a more upbeat rocker type tune, that then bleeds over into “The Rake’s Progress” and eventually “100 Nights”.
It was at this time that H greeted the audience. As always, the crowd was simply crazy and cheering like mad, as if we’ve never seen the band before live. H then announced the theme of the nights’ set list: “…so tonight we’re going to play the shortest set ever...” Mild playful boo’s from the audience emerged during H’s pause, and then he continued, “…of longest Marillion songs…” Huge cheers erupted. My guess had been correct!
They continued onward with “This is the 21st Century”, a track from the “Anoraknophobia” album, which seemed to really get the audience excited. After that, they launched into my ultimate want for the weekend…the epic bonus track from “Marbles” called “Ocean Cloud”. The theater lighting turned blue/green and the screen filled with an ocean wave-like image as the slow-ish introduction to the song began. It was one of those moment where I’ve waited so long to hear the track live, and the song is so epic in length, that I couldn’t really take it all in on one listen. I’ve had that experience before with longer songs. Regardless, it sounded great, was very memorable, and both myself and everyone around me was ecstatic that they had played it.
The funniest moment of the night came when Pete Trewavas, the bass player, started playing a sort of country western riff on the bass in between songs. H heard this and started adlibbing vocals, trying to tie in as many country cliché’s as he possibly could, something about roping steers, drinking, cheating, etc. As what would be the refrain approached, H sang “…on the Brokeback mountain…I’ve been doing it for years…” Both the crowd and the band were cracking up, and Pete smiled into the microphone, yelling out, “That’s a little preview of our next album!” More laughter erupted, and then H continued, “Yeah, we all sat in a circle and asked, ‘Where haven’t we gone?’ and we thought, gay country!” This was even more amusing to me since I had just had the discussion about how Marillion, as a band, has done so many different sounds over their career and have never seemed afraid to try new things. H then continued, “You know, I apologize to any gay guy’s in the audience. That was a cheap shot. Therefore, I dedicate this next song to you”, and the band roared into the very long titled “If My Heart Were a Ball It Would Roll Uphill”.
After that, H commented on how they very rarely play the next track. It was my other ultimate want, the epic “Interior Lulu”. Some guy next to me kept yelling, “Lulu! Lulu!” One of my cats’ nicknames is Lulu so this seemed confusing to me for a slight moment. They ended the set with the three song anthem from the 1985 album “Misplaced Childhood”, consisting of “Kayleigh”, “Lavender”, and “Heart of Lothian”. Once again, the older material really seemed to get everyone into full singing mode, with just about everyone’s arms raised into the air while yelling, “Wide boys! Wide boys! Born with Heart of Lothian!” Who am I kidding? I even do this at home when I’m listening to the album!
Another interesting moment came when H looked at the audience with a curious look in his eye during one of the more instrumental passages of one of the songs. He then did what I call the “Peter Gabriel”, which consists of holding your arms out in a cross-like fashion and falling backwards into the audience, allowing them to carry your body around. He pulled it off in perfect fashion and the audience promptly carried him out towards the back of the theater, quite a way’s from the stage. A guy standing next to me commented to his friend, “Um, how’s he going to finish the rest of the song and get back on the stage?” It was almost as if H heard this because at that very moment I could see H pointing in the stage’s general direction. Like some strange floating taxi ride, the audience obliged and then carried him back to the stage in perfect fashion. Upon standing up again in his usual spot, H beamed like a child in a candy store.
I can’t completely remember but I think they broke the encores into three sections, playing one epic song at a time. It began with “The Invisible Man”, probably one of their best tracks of all time. I heard them play this during the 2004 tour but, like I said previously, I couldn’t take it all in during that show. I was able to enjoy the track much more thoroughly this time around and the lighting and everything else really contributed to it.
“This Strange Engine” was played next, actually my favorite epic tune of the band’s of all time. I did hear this on the 1997 tour but this night’s version far exceeded it as well. In 1997, I recall H spending a lot of time behind the keyboard so I was pleased to see him up and around this time out instead. The band did seem to be having a few technical difficulties which distracted H awhile but I don’t think the crowd really minded.
As the Marillion weekend winded down to the very end, H had a list of names on a piece of paper of which he wanted to thank. A huge number of audience members yelled out a “thank you!” in reference to scheduling the event in the first place and for actually making the trip out to North America, as I think all of us who attended felt exactly the same way. H seemed really choked up by everything. He also mentioned how “Montreal has always been a very special place for us…” H thanked the crew, the theater, and then let out a special thank you: “And thanks to Lucy for getting Mosley out of bed every day by 12:30…”
After thanking everyone, H mentioned to the crowd how incredible it was to be on the stage at that very moment, feeling all the love from the audience, and how there weren’t any real words to describe it. H said, “We’re going to leave you with this song.” He then stopped, looked towards stage left, and asked, “…are we?” Mark Kelly shook his head and a faint “yes” could be heard in his microphone. After playing their final song, “Neverland”, and as the band left the stage for the last and final time, I could see that H had some tears in his eyes. He was really moved by the whole thing, as I think all of us were as well. Mark Kelly came down from his keyboard pedestal, looked at H, put his arm around him and walked with him off the stage, almost in a consoling nature.
I’m not sure who was moved more by the weekend’s festivities - the band or the crowd. Either way, H did state that they would be back. Holding him to his word, onward to 2011’s convention!
Monday – Time to Head Home…
I set my alarm for a time that I wasn’t used to waking up and surprisingly I was up on time. In truth, I had a hard time sleeping due to a mixture of leftover excitement from the show and mild anxiety about the long day of airport hokey pokey that awaited me.
I cleaned up (the best I can, anyhow), checked out of the hotel, and made my way to the Metro for one last ride over to the Central Bus Station. I hopped upon L’Aerobus and to my surprise made it on time for the 9:30am bus. Maybe my luck was changing?
I ended up getting to the airport extremely early but I figured I’d be able to take my time, eat a nice breakfast, and so on. It turned out that they only had Burger King inside the terminal and so that was my feast, washed down with a venti Starbucks drink that I wasn’t actually familiar with. On my way walking through the terminal to my gate I passed a guy wearing a Marillion Weekend t-shirt. I briefly thought about saluting him but then again, with airport security being what it is these days, I’d probably get arrested or something.
I later found more people wearing their Marillion Weekend t-shirts and struck up a conversation with a few of them. It seemed unanimous that everyone was ecstatic about how wonderfully the weekend had played out.
All in all, the trip was quite amazing. I really didn’t get to see and experience Montreal at all, which was a bit of a drag, but the trip was really about the music and in that regard I got more than my money’s worth. It also got my mind off of being out of work for a few days since I completely left that mindset back at home, except maybe for not wanting to spend too much cash. In summary, after 20 years of Marillion diehard fan-dom, I finally got to see them the way I always wanted to, with the songs I wanted to hear, and it all seemed like a celebration of my 20th anniversary of being a fan.
Strangely, before going to the Weekend, I was mildly afraid that I’d experience severe concert and/or Marillion burnout. I mean, three days in a row? It seemed like it could be excessive. Well, it was the exact opposite. I didn’t experience any concert burn out at all, and instead, upon arriving home, I pulled out as many Marillion albums as I could and listened to them daily with a furious passion. I would have never expected this. I also experienced a bit of post Marillion depression, of returning home and feeling like there was nothing to look forward to after such an awesome event. I read some of the online blogs and it seemed I’m not alone in this since others reported similar side effects. Very odd. I’ve also seen two unrelated shows since then and couldn’t really get into either since they paled in comparison, and both were a couple of my favorite acts. Again, wow…
It’s now been a little over two weeks since the Weekend and I’m just starting to wind down, that is, after not just listening to the albums but also watching the DVD’s and so on. All I can say is that this is some powerful stuff. As their mantra states, “Find a better way of life…Marillion.com”. If you haven’t already, you should definitely check it out!
jstw
(Sunday Night’s Set List)
A Few Words for the Dead
This Town
The Rake’s Progress
100 Nights
This is the 21st Century
Ocean Cloud
If My Heart Were a Ball It Would Roll Uphill
Interior Lulu
Kayleigh
Lavendar
Heart of Lothian
(Encore 1)
The Invisible Man
(Encore 2)
This Strange Engine
(Encore 3)
Neverland
(For anyone interested in hearing some of Marillion’s work, you can go directly to their website at http://www.marillion.com/music/racket/crash.htm and either have a free CD sent to you or you can simply download it…again, all for free. What have you got to lose?)
(NOTE: All quotes listed in these articles are to the very best of my memory and are not to be taken verbatim. Set lists are also via memory, and whereas I’m pretty confident that I have all the songs listed here, the nightly order might be slightly out of whack.)
Sunday, During the Day
Sunday began a bit earlier than Saturday had, thankfully, but I still had a late enough start that I opted to skip breakfast, although skipping my morning coffee wasn’t an option. I decided that I would attempt to try and see some of Montreal but would take it easy due to once again not feeling the greatest. It basically seemed like I only felt well during the shows themselves; the rest of the time I felt under the weather.
My first stop of the day was to go to a place that I had passed the previous day. Their sign was in a more readable half French/half English style and looked like the Montreal equivalent to a White Castle sort of establishment. They boasted very clearly that they had both poutine and tofu hot dogs and so I felt that was a pretty safe option for a vegetarian like myself. I had read in my tour guide that poutine was considered “the dish” of Montreal, at least in a fast food sort of way. From what I had gathered, poutine must mean something like “a mess” in French and it consisted of greasy french fries covered with gravy, and then topped with cheese curds. I couldn’t resist! I had also never had a tofu hot dog anywhere except at home since I’ve never seen them on a menu prior to this.
The place was called LaFleur’s, and even though a different establishment was voted the tops for poutine, that place more or less scared me a way for a variety of reasons. LaFleur’s, though, looked less chaotic, easier to negotiate with the staff in the event of a language barrier, and so on. I ordered my food and it rang up as 2.59 Canadian dollars. No, that couldn’t be right since the sign said it was in the 7.99 range. Ah, here we go! Luckily, we got it straightened out and I waited patiently for my food.
To my shock, it was really not bad at all. They were probably the best tofu dogs I had ever had, better than anything I had ever made, and the buns were absolutely bizaree…kind of flat-like in nature and yet really tasty since they were more crisp. The poutine wasn’t bad either, although a mess it certainly was! I couldn’t find a fork so I went at it with my fingers and quickly had it everywhere.
After leaving LaFleur’s and attempting to clean my hands of gravy, I took the Metro up two stations, further than I had previously gone, and embarked on a rather lengthy walk to purchase a homemade bagel right out of the oven for a whopping 65 cents. That also was pretty amazing although the place is strictly a bakery and does not garnish the bagels at all, meaning with cream cheese or what have you. Considering I had just eaten a little while earlier that more or less worked itself out.
I was beginning to really tire out and made my way back to the Metro station. Now, up until this time, every Metro station I had been to had an attendant on duty which was good since I needed to flash my transit pass in order to get through the turnstile. I’m not sure why they don’t have these passes setup for their machines but alas they do not. Feeling pretty exhausted, I entered the Metro station to find no attendant on duty, nor was there even a place for one. Uh oh… I thought, well, maybe I can just buy a one way pass for the moment from the machine. There were 2 issues with this brilliance: a) the machine only seemed to be in French and b) I was able to translate that the machine was out of order regardless. Um, so, what do you do now? You do the only thing you can do…walk to the next Metro station. Ugh.
Luckily, it wasn’t too terribly far but I was near ready to collapse by the time I got there. I now had two choices: venture out and do a ton of walking in order to sightsee, or, return to the hotel and just relax and take it easy until show time. I thought about it while I was waiting for the train to arrive. It quickly became apparent judging from the fatigue that I was feeling that any major sightseeing in Montreal wasn’t going to be happening and that I should instead just take it easy.
The train arrived and it was already pretty crowded. I barely made my way in to the standing area and very quickly noticed a terribly strong aroma of, well, like day old salami or sausage, hanging in the air. It was one of those uncomfortable moments when obviously everyone smelled it but no one knew where or what it was coming from, so everyone looks around kind of nervously. The smell was unbearable, especially to a vegetarian. Could it be someone’s breath? Who breathes that heavy anyhow? Was it on someone’s clothes or something? How would you get that sort of smell anyhow…by rolling around in sausage? The more I thought about it the less I wanted to know. Just then, the train doors shut. I was now locked in with the odor and the sausage offender. I tried to focus elsewhere but it was gagging. The smell was so overpowering that I casually scanned the various passengers in the vicinity, half expecting to see a large 6 ft tall sausage man ala Oscar Meyer, standing and holding on to the railing, waving and smiling at people.
As soon as the doors opened at my stop, I exited as quickly as possible. Luckily, I had to switch train lines in order to get back so the ride didn’t take long. I can’t tell you how grateful I was to be rid of the salami sucker.
Since I had decided to lay low the rest of the day, I opted to sweeten the deal by overshooting my usual stop by 2 stations and grabbing a piece of cheesecake and a coffee at an establishment ironically named Calories. Yeah, talk about guilt trip while eating! I ended up getting a berry cheesecake but I think I would have been more pleased with the straight up plain. I mildly contemplated getting one for the road but, well, let’s not be too overzealous.
After this, I returned to the hotel and just collapsed on the bed for awhile. I flipped channels on the TV and the best I could find to watch was the movie “Mousehunt”. I considered myself lucky since 70% of the channels were in French. I also had briefly thought about going to see a movie at a theater but what if it was only in French? Again, most normal people could probably navigate easily around these things by asking questions and such but, well, I’m not really normal in that sort of way, if you haven’t already noticed.
A few hours passed and the final show was looming on the horizon. I wasn’t too terribly hungry but I knew I couldn’t last the whole evening without eating. I decided to just venture across the street to a nearby Mediterranean take out place and eat it leisurely back in the hotel room. A little while later, I took the obligatory Advil in preparation for the evening’s show and prepared myself.
I left slightly earlier this night, thinking that I’d try and get there before any music began. I walked into the Metro station and headed toward the booth where the attendant worked. As I did this, I noticed that the attendant was actually leaving the booth and walking away. Mild panic started brewing within me…here we go again! I started casually following him, to see where he was going, and he seemed a little nervous by this. He took the corner and as I rounded it, he was gone! At first I thought he disappeared but then I noticed some painted over service doors that were barely noticeable. Either way, he was now out of reach so I went back to the booth to find a large sign in the window that was, of course, completely in French.
I stood there, frowning, trying to find any sort of clue in regards to what the sign actually said. I looked for something with numbers, ala “…be back in 5 minutes…” Nothing. In fact, there were a lot of words on the sign so that didn’t seem promising. As I started to weigh my options in regard to whether it was a “be back soon” vs. “closed for the evening” sort of sign, I then figured that maybe another English speaking person would come along and translate. Someone did come along…an older lady, possibly even homeless, who took one look at the sign and started ranting and raving in French something I can only imagine. She didn’t seem like the right one to ask for the interpretation. So, now, not only was I lost on what the sign said but I also had a lunatic yelling while walking in mild circles around me. Great!
The clock was also ticking. So much for being early! I set a deadline and figured I’d give him 10 minutes to return or else I’d start walking. After about seven minutes, he did return, looking more relaxed. It was probably a bathroom break…which would explain a lot!
I quickly arranged things so that I could get through the turnstile right away. This was smart since the lady immediately started up some sort of mild argument with the attendant right behind me. I did my best to get away and headed towards the train as quickly as I could.
Sunday Night Show
As much as I planned to arrive early, I ended up arriving at just about the same time as the previous two nights. This ended up being fine since, for some odd reason, even though I had allowed ample “relief” time before this, a bathroom break was now at the top of the list of things to do upon entering the theater.
Now, where’s the bathroom? I figured it was down below and started following signs with an arrow and some sort of verbiage in French above it. After following this path around and down a staircase, I discovered this was instead where the coat check was. The two coat check attendants looked bored out of their skulls and immediately perked up as I came around the corner. Upon asking where the bathroom was located, neither of them spoke English and so a mild exchange of confusion broke out for a few seconds. Someone from the back was called up and explained that the bathroom was actually located in the balcony level. Hmm, interesting!
I made my way upstairs and into the restroom. I could hear music playing now so someone was clearly on stage but it was obviously prerecorded since it was the version of “Roxanne” from the film “Moulin Rouge”. What the heck were they doing down there? I heard cheers, and then silence, and then cheers. I couldn’t figure it out, all the while the music was blaring in the restroom at a very unnecessarily loud volume.
After emerging from the restroom, I made my way back downstairs and into the usual area where I had stood previously. I now understood what the music and cheers were about…there were two people on stage doing some sort of magician act. Odd! Even more bizarre, as soon as I came to a stop in my usual spot, the music and the act also ended so it only lasted about a whole 5 minutes. Everyone around me seemed to have an “okay, what the heck was that all about?” sort of look on their faces, including myself.
Not long after that, John Wesley came out and did an opening set. He’s basically just about always the opening act for Marillion whenever they do shows in the U.S. so most of the audience is usually already familiar with him. He is pretty good and was no different on this night, and his guitar work really does shine. I was really impressed with how light of a touch he had with his acoustic and yet his playing was super strong.
We then went through the usual shtick, with the slideshow in the background while the crew prepared the stage. Even though they had very little to clear off this night since John Wesley played alone acoustically, for some reason it took slightly longer to get the band on the stage.
Marillion emerged and started the final night’s performance with “A Few Words for the Dead”, the last track on the “Radiation” album. Lead singer Steve Hogarth (H) was wearing an interesting drape-like outfit that looked of Eastern decent. It was an interesting choice of song to open a set since it’s kind of slow in the beginning. To make up for it, they next launched into “This Town”, a more upbeat rocker type tune, that then bleeds over into “The Rake’s Progress” and eventually “100 Nights”.
It was at this time that H greeted the audience. As always, the crowd was simply crazy and cheering like mad, as if we’ve never seen the band before live. H then announced the theme of the nights’ set list: “…so tonight we’re going to play the shortest set ever...” Mild playful boo’s from the audience emerged during H’s pause, and then he continued, “…of longest Marillion songs…” Huge cheers erupted. My guess had been correct!
They continued onward with “This is the 21st Century”, a track from the “Anoraknophobia” album, which seemed to really get the audience excited. After that, they launched into my ultimate want for the weekend…the epic bonus track from “Marbles” called “Ocean Cloud”. The theater lighting turned blue/green and the screen filled with an ocean wave-like image as the slow-ish introduction to the song began. It was one of those moment where I’ve waited so long to hear the track live, and the song is so epic in length, that I couldn’t really take it all in on one listen. I’ve had that experience before with longer songs. Regardless, it sounded great, was very memorable, and both myself and everyone around me was ecstatic that they had played it.
The funniest moment of the night came when Pete Trewavas, the bass player, started playing a sort of country western riff on the bass in between songs. H heard this and started adlibbing vocals, trying to tie in as many country cliché’s as he possibly could, something about roping steers, drinking, cheating, etc. As what would be the refrain approached, H sang “…on the Brokeback mountain…I’ve been doing it for years…” Both the crowd and the band were cracking up, and Pete smiled into the microphone, yelling out, “That’s a little preview of our next album!” More laughter erupted, and then H continued, “Yeah, we all sat in a circle and asked, ‘Where haven’t we gone?’ and we thought, gay country!” This was even more amusing to me since I had just had the discussion about how Marillion, as a band, has done so many different sounds over their career and have never seemed afraid to try new things. H then continued, “You know, I apologize to any gay guy’s in the audience. That was a cheap shot. Therefore, I dedicate this next song to you”, and the band roared into the very long titled “If My Heart Were a Ball It Would Roll Uphill”.
After that, H commented on how they very rarely play the next track. It was my other ultimate want, the epic “Interior Lulu”. Some guy next to me kept yelling, “Lulu! Lulu!” One of my cats’ nicknames is Lulu so this seemed confusing to me for a slight moment. They ended the set with the three song anthem from the 1985 album “Misplaced Childhood”, consisting of “Kayleigh”, “Lavender”, and “Heart of Lothian”. Once again, the older material really seemed to get everyone into full singing mode, with just about everyone’s arms raised into the air while yelling, “Wide boys! Wide boys! Born with Heart of Lothian!” Who am I kidding? I even do this at home when I’m listening to the album!
Another interesting moment came when H looked at the audience with a curious look in his eye during one of the more instrumental passages of one of the songs. He then did what I call the “Peter Gabriel”, which consists of holding your arms out in a cross-like fashion and falling backwards into the audience, allowing them to carry your body around. He pulled it off in perfect fashion and the audience promptly carried him out towards the back of the theater, quite a way’s from the stage. A guy standing next to me commented to his friend, “Um, how’s he going to finish the rest of the song and get back on the stage?” It was almost as if H heard this because at that very moment I could see H pointing in the stage’s general direction. Like some strange floating taxi ride, the audience obliged and then carried him back to the stage in perfect fashion. Upon standing up again in his usual spot, H beamed like a child in a candy store.
I can’t completely remember but I think they broke the encores into three sections, playing one epic song at a time. It began with “The Invisible Man”, probably one of their best tracks of all time. I heard them play this during the 2004 tour but, like I said previously, I couldn’t take it all in during that show. I was able to enjoy the track much more thoroughly this time around and the lighting and everything else really contributed to it.
“This Strange Engine” was played next, actually my favorite epic tune of the band’s of all time. I did hear this on the 1997 tour but this night’s version far exceeded it as well. In 1997, I recall H spending a lot of time behind the keyboard so I was pleased to see him up and around this time out instead. The band did seem to be having a few technical difficulties which distracted H awhile but I don’t think the crowd really minded.
As the Marillion weekend winded down to the very end, H had a list of names on a piece of paper of which he wanted to thank. A huge number of audience members yelled out a “thank you!” in reference to scheduling the event in the first place and for actually making the trip out to North America, as I think all of us who attended felt exactly the same way. H seemed really choked up by everything. He also mentioned how “Montreal has always been a very special place for us…” H thanked the crew, the theater, and then let out a special thank you: “And thanks to Lucy for getting Mosley out of bed every day by 12:30…”
After thanking everyone, H mentioned to the crowd how incredible it was to be on the stage at that very moment, feeling all the love from the audience, and how there weren’t any real words to describe it. H said, “We’re going to leave you with this song.” He then stopped, looked towards stage left, and asked, “…are we?” Mark Kelly shook his head and a faint “yes” could be heard in his microphone. After playing their final song, “Neverland”, and as the band left the stage for the last and final time, I could see that H had some tears in his eyes. He was really moved by the whole thing, as I think all of us were as well. Mark Kelly came down from his keyboard pedestal, looked at H, put his arm around him and walked with him off the stage, almost in a consoling nature.
I’m not sure who was moved more by the weekend’s festivities - the band or the crowd. Either way, H did state that they would be back. Holding him to his word, onward to 2011’s convention!
Monday – Time to Head Home…
I set my alarm for a time that I wasn’t used to waking up and surprisingly I was up on time. In truth, I had a hard time sleeping due to a mixture of leftover excitement from the show and mild anxiety about the long day of airport hokey pokey that awaited me.
I cleaned up (the best I can, anyhow), checked out of the hotel, and made my way to the Metro for one last ride over to the Central Bus Station. I hopped upon L’Aerobus and to my surprise made it on time for the 9:30am bus. Maybe my luck was changing?
I ended up getting to the airport extremely early but I figured I’d be able to take my time, eat a nice breakfast, and so on. It turned out that they only had Burger King inside the terminal and so that was my feast, washed down with a venti Starbucks drink that I wasn’t actually familiar with. On my way walking through the terminal to my gate I passed a guy wearing a Marillion Weekend t-shirt. I briefly thought about saluting him but then again, with airport security being what it is these days, I’d probably get arrested or something.
I later found more people wearing their Marillion Weekend t-shirts and struck up a conversation with a few of them. It seemed unanimous that everyone was ecstatic about how wonderfully the weekend had played out.
All in all, the trip was quite amazing. I really didn’t get to see and experience Montreal at all, which was a bit of a drag, but the trip was really about the music and in that regard I got more than my money’s worth. It also got my mind off of being out of work for a few days since I completely left that mindset back at home, except maybe for not wanting to spend too much cash. In summary, after 20 years of Marillion diehard fan-dom, I finally got to see them the way I always wanted to, with the songs I wanted to hear, and it all seemed like a celebration of my 20th anniversary of being a fan.
Strangely, before going to the Weekend, I was mildly afraid that I’d experience severe concert and/or Marillion burnout. I mean, three days in a row? It seemed like it could be excessive. Well, it was the exact opposite. I didn’t experience any concert burn out at all, and instead, upon arriving home, I pulled out as many Marillion albums as I could and listened to them daily with a furious passion. I would have never expected this. I also experienced a bit of post Marillion depression, of returning home and feeling like there was nothing to look forward to after such an awesome event. I read some of the online blogs and it seemed I’m not alone in this since others reported similar side effects. Very odd. I’ve also seen two unrelated shows since then and couldn’t really get into either since they paled in comparison, and both were a couple of my favorite acts. Again, wow…
It’s now been a little over two weeks since the Weekend and I’m just starting to wind down, that is, after not just listening to the albums but also watching the DVD’s and so on. All I can say is that this is some powerful stuff. As their mantra states, “Find a better way of life…Marillion.com”. If you haven’t already, you should definitely check it out!
jstw
(Sunday Night’s Set List)
A Few Words for the Dead
This Town
The Rake’s Progress
100 Nights
This is the 21st Century
Ocean Cloud
If My Heart Were a Ball It Would Roll Uphill
Interior Lulu
Kayleigh
Lavendar
Heart of Lothian
(Encore 1)
The Invisible Man
(Encore 2)
This Strange Engine
(Encore 3)
Neverland
Monday, April 13, 2009
Marillion Weekend, April 3-5, 2009 - Part 3 of 4
Saturday Night’s Performance, April 4th, 2009 at Theatre L’Olympia, Montreal, Quebec
(For anyone interested in hearing some of Marillion’s work, you can go directly to their website at http://www.marillion.com/music/racket/crash.htm and either have a free CD sent to you or you can simply download it…again, all for free. What have you got to lose?)
(NOTE: All quotes listed in these articles are to the very best of my memory and are not to be taken verbatim. Set lists are also via memory, and whereas I’m pretty confident that I have all the songs listed here, the nightly order might be slightly out of whack.)
Saturday, During the Day
I awoke briefly at around 9am to the sound of a French women’s voice as the lady in question was trying to enter my room in order to clean it. It seemed that I had forgotten to put the “do not disturb” ticket on my door the previous evening, mostly due to being too tired to do so or remember to do it. I had my eyes half open but my mouth was working fine. “No, thank you!!!” I yelled back at her but she seemed determined to enter, or she simply didn’t understand what I was saying of which the feeling was mutual. We interacted in this manner a few more times and then she finally went away. I looked at the clock and then unintentionally promptly fell right back to sleep.
I finally awoke at 11:30am. To say that I was exhausted was evidently putting it mildly! As much as I love my cats, it’s always a little bit of a vacation to be in a hotel and not have any felines waking me up at the crack of dawn just because the sun decided to show itself. This sort of interaction is extremely painful during the bi-annual time change since the cats fail to realize that the clocks were set backward/forward. Needless to say, when I do get the chance to sleep completely uninterrupted (or nearly, if you count the lady pounding on the door), I try to take advantage of it!
Once I got out of bed I realized that I still wasn’t feeling the greatest. I looked out the window and saw that it was drizzling rain pretty steadily under a very gray sky. It didn’t seem like the greatest sight seeing weather to begin with and coupled with how I was feeling I opted to just more or less forget about it and take my time.
My stomach was growling unbelievably. I finally got “breakfast”, if you will, at around 12:45pm, from a small coffee shop sort of place across the street. I took it back to my room and contemplated the rest of my day.
With the clock ticking and the day looking pretty gloomy, I decided to only make a brief excursion out and around Montreal. I first checked out what they call the Underground City, more or less a shopping mall type of establishment that’s a level below ground and sometimes setup to connect Metro stations and such. It was pretty uneventful. It was also really crowded, considering the weather.
The other main reason for venturing out at all this day was because I was going to need to eat dinner at some point. So far, every restaurant that I had come into contact with seemed to have their menu only in French, and when you’re searching for a vegetarian friendly establishment, well, this is a bit intimidating, or at least it was for me. I did have a couple of names of places nearby and so it was an opportunity to plan my evening’s dining beforehand in order to avoid blind panic later. I spied on a supposedly vegetarian buffet, gave it a thumbs up for later on, and then hopped on the nearest Metro, heading over to the area that’s referred to as Plateau Mont-Royal in my tourist guide.
I basically just walked around on the streets, in the rain, mind you, but with a small umbrella, looking at the various establishments and such. It wasn’t a good day to take pictures, obviously, so I skipped that idea. I stopped in a small hat shop and then continued my way looking for various eating establishments and such that I had read about. In a little over an hour’s worth of time, I ended up making a big circle and eventually hopped another Metro in order to go back towards the hotel. By then I was already mildly hungry and it was around 4:30pm so I decided to eat and just get it over with.
The buffet was interesting. I’ve never been to a vegetarian buffet before. It was like a Hometown Buffet restaurant but with everything dedicated to vegetarianism. The oddest part was that it wasn’t what I know of a buffet to be…all you can eat. Instead, they weighed my plate, which seemed slightly embarrassing and kind of personal, and then charged me by the gram! It certainly prevented me from going back for seconds and overeating! The food was okay. I wouldn’t really brag about it, nor would I probably return. I’m sure there were much better options in the neighborhood but again, the whole menu in French thing was just intimidating me and I’m not one that usually prefers to rely on communicating with wait-staff in order to be able to eat appropriately.
I then went back to the hotel and just relaxed for a bit, even closing my eyes for awhile. It seemed like a waste of a day, really, but then considering that I was unemployed and shouldn’t be spending a lot of money anyhow, maybe it was appropriate. My headache was also not much better, nor was my stomach. I watched some TV and then waited until it was time to leave for the evening’s performance.
Saturday Night Show
Originally, I thought I would arrive earlier this time around for the show but due to how I was feeling, I opted for the same plan as the night before, arriving right around 8pm, or what I thought was show time. I seemed to have no issue before maneuvering my way up to the front part of the stage so I gambled that it would be the same on this night.
It was still raining with that steady drizzle from earlier in the day. As I approached the theater, I noticed that there was absolutely no one hanging around it. I figured it was due to the rain. I entered the theater, showed my Marillion Weekend wristband, and started making my way through the crowd. I went to the same basic area that I was standing in the previous night. To my surprise, one of the opening acts, the Wishing Tree, was already performing even though it was about five minutes to 8pm. As the song came to a close, they said their “thank you’s” and left, and it was then that I realized that they didn’t just start, they had just ended. Evidently, the schedule of the performances was changed to begin earlier, unbeknownst to me.
There were two opening acts this night and next up were Sun Domingo again, the same band from the previous night. They played another really solid set, ending with a very interesting duo drum solo sort of thing, where the guitarist picked up a set of sticks and started drumming over the actual drummer, eventually changing positions and such. It was quite a way to end their set and really got everyone excited.
We went through the slideshow again as the road crew prepared the stage. About a half hour later, Marillion came out. They began with “This Train is My Life”, a track off of the newest album “Happiness is the Road”. It’s a slower tune so it was greeted with mixed energy but by the time it ended everyone was insane all over again.
What happened next is still amazing me to this very day and will probably live in my memory for as long as I’m around. What happened was one of the most amazing performances I’ve ever seen…ever. It was so amazing that I began typing this entry as soon as I got into my hotel room that very evening, even though it was 1am by then! It was so amazing that I simply couldn’t let my memory fail to capture everything 1-2 weeks later.
Let’s put this into perspective: on Friday night, the band was great... I mean, again, I’ve seen them 3 times prior to this, spaced apart nicely. In 2004 at the Chicago show, they were good but something was lacking, at least for me. Was it the venue? Was it the crowd? Lack of energy in the air? Not the greatest set list? I don’t know, something like that. I do know that Steve Hogarth didn’t move around very much at that performance, maybe due to the stage setup or something, but it made the show a little disappointing.
In 1997, at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, it was just a totally bizarre venue to be seeing them in. The venue is more for popular “bar bands”, if you will, and they just didn’t have the space to really do their normal show nor the lighting. Also, the crowd sits at that venue, eats dinner during the performance and so on, so that made it pretty odd as well.
In 1990…well, ‘nuff said. It made my list of top 10 shows ever in my life, and I’ve seen so many shows that that’s REALLY saying something. They were phenomenal, beyond belief, amazing, and so on. Incredibly energetic. They also sounded absolutely fabulous, better than any band I had ever seen up until that point.
So, back to Saturday night’s performance, and why I immediately reached for the computer when I got back to my hotel room… Again, the previous night, they were really fantastic. It was definitely the second best I had ever seen them perform, second only to the 1990 show.
This night, however, they were f***ing incredible. I mean, absolutely f***ing incredible and I don’t swear much! The set list, the energy, EVERYTHING…oh my goodness! They played for nearly 3 hours and yet seemed to just have more and more energy as the night went on. Again, every note of every song was perfect. The set list was amazing in its’ own right, a total dream for a diehard. They seemed to focus on songs that are fan favorites, a combination of more pop oriented songs and some more obscure tracks. Strangely, they stayed away from playing any of their longer, more progressive songs. Could they be saving these for the Sunday performance? Could they do this sort of amazing performance again the following evening? Was that even possible? That wouldn’t even be human, would it?
(For anyone interested in hearing some of Marillion’s work, you can go directly to their website at http://www.marillion.com/music/racket/crash.htm and either have a free CD sent to you or you can simply download it…again, all for free. What have you got to lose?)
(NOTE: All quotes listed in these articles are to the very best of my memory and are not to be taken verbatim. Set lists are also via memory, and whereas I’m pretty confident that I have all the songs listed here, the nightly order might be slightly out of whack.)
Saturday, During the Day
I awoke briefly at around 9am to the sound of a French women’s voice as the lady in question was trying to enter my room in order to clean it. It seemed that I had forgotten to put the “do not disturb” ticket on my door the previous evening, mostly due to being too tired to do so or remember to do it. I had my eyes half open but my mouth was working fine. “No, thank you!!!” I yelled back at her but she seemed determined to enter, or she simply didn’t understand what I was saying of which the feeling was mutual. We interacted in this manner a few more times and then she finally went away. I looked at the clock and then unintentionally promptly fell right back to sleep.
I finally awoke at 11:30am. To say that I was exhausted was evidently putting it mildly! As much as I love my cats, it’s always a little bit of a vacation to be in a hotel and not have any felines waking me up at the crack of dawn just because the sun decided to show itself. This sort of interaction is extremely painful during the bi-annual time change since the cats fail to realize that the clocks were set backward/forward. Needless to say, when I do get the chance to sleep completely uninterrupted (or nearly, if you count the lady pounding on the door), I try to take advantage of it!
Once I got out of bed I realized that I still wasn’t feeling the greatest. I looked out the window and saw that it was drizzling rain pretty steadily under a very gray sky. It didn’t seem like the greatest sight seeing weather to begin with and coupled with how I was feeling I opted to just more or less forget about it and take my time.
My stomach was growling unbelievably. I finally got “breakfast”, if you will, at around 12:45pm, from a small coffee shop sort of place across the street. I took it back to my room and contemplated the rest of my day.
With the clock ticking and the day looking pretty gloomy, I decided to only make a brief excursion out and around Montreal. I first checked out what they call the Underground City, more or less a shopping mall type of establishment that’s a level below ground and sometimes setup to connect Metro stations and such. It was pretty uneventful. It was also really crowded, considering the weather.
The other main reason for venturing out at all this day was because I was going to need to eat dinner at some point. So far, every restaurant that I had come into contact with seemed to have their menu only in French, and when you’re searching for a vegetarian friendly establishment, well, this is a bit intimidating, or at least it was for me. I did have a couple of names of places nearby and so it was an opportunity to plan my evening’s dining beforehand in order to avoid blind panic later. I spied on a supposedly vegetarian buffet, gave it a thumbs up for later on, and then hopped on the nearest Metro, heading over to the area that’s referred to as Plateau Mont-Royal in my tourist guide.
I basically just walked around on the streets, in the rain, mind you, but with a small umbrella, looking at the various establishments and such. It wasn’t a good day to take pictures, obviously, so I skipped that idea. I stopped in a small hat shop and then continued my way looking for various eating establishments and such that I had read about. In a little over an hour’s worth of time, I ended up making a big circle and eventually hopped another Metro in order to go back towards the hotel. By then I was already mildly hungry and it was around 4:30pm so I decided to eat and just get it over with.
The buffet was interesting. I’ve never been to a vegetarian buffet before. It was like a Hometown Buffet restaurant but with everything dedicated to vegetarianism. The oddest part was that it wasn’t what I know of a buffet to be…all you can eat. Instead, they weighed my plate, which seemed slightly embarrassing and kind of personal, and then charged me by the gram! It certainly prevented me from going back for seconds and overeating! The food was okay. I wouldn’t really brag about it, nor would I probably return. I’m sure there were much better options in the neighborhood but again, the whole menu in French thing was just intimidating me and I’m not one that usually prefers to rely on communicating with wait-staff in order to be able to eat appropriately.
I then went back to the hotel and just relaxed for a bit, even closing my eyes for awhile. It seemed like a waste of a day, really, but then considering that I was unemployed and shouldn’t be spending a lot of money anyhow, maybe it was appropriate. My headache was also not much better, nor was my stomach. I watched some TV and then waited until it was time to leave for the evening’s performance.
Saturday Night Show
Originally, I thought I would arrive earlier this time around for the show but due to how I was feeling, I opted for the same plan as the night before, arriving right around 8pm, or what I thought was show time. I seemed to have no issue before maneuvering my way up to the front part of the stage so I gambled that it would be the same on this night.
It was still raining with that steady drizzle from earlier in the day. As I approached the theater, I noticed that there was absolutely no one hanging around it. I figured it was due to the rain. I entered the theater, showed my Marillion Weekend wristband, and started making my way through the crowd. I went to the same basic area that I was standing in the previous night. To my surprise, one of the opening acts, the Wishing Tree, was already performing even though it was about five minutes to 8pm. As the song came to a close, they said their “thank you’s” and left, and it was then that I realized that they didn’t just start, they had just ended. Evidently, the schedule of the performances was changed to begin earlier, unbeknownst to me.
There were two opening acts this night and next up were Sun Domingo again, the same band from the previous night. They played another really solid set, ending with a very interesting duo drum solo sort of thing, where the guitarist picked up a set of sticks and started drumming over the actual drummer, eventually changing positions and such. It was quite a way to end their set and really got everyone excited.
We went through the slideshow again as the road crew prepared the stage. About a half hour later, Marillion came out. They began with “This Train is My Life”, a track off of the newest album “Happiness is the Road”. It’s a slower tune so it was greeted with mixed energy but by the time it ended everyone was insane all over again.
What happened next is still amazing me to this very day and will probably live in my memory for as long as I’m around. What happened was one of the most amazing performances I’ve ever seen…ever. It was so amazing that I began typing this entry as soon as I got into my hotel room that very evening, even though it was 1am by then! It was so amazing that I simply couldn’t let my memory fail to capture everything 1-2 weeks later.
Let’s put this into perspective: on Friday night, the band was great... I mean, again, I’ve seen them 3 times prior to this, spaced apart nicely. In 2004 at the Chicago show, they were good but something was lacking, at least for me. Was it the venue? Was it the crowd? Lack of energy in the air? Not the greatest set list? I don’t know, something like that. I do know that Steve Hogarth didn’t move around very much at that performance, maybe due to the stage setup or something, but it made the show a little disappointing.
In 1997, at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, it was just a totally bizarre venue to be seeing them in. The venue is more for popular “bar bands”, if you will, and they just didn’t have the space to really do their normal show nor the lighting. Also, the crowd sits at that venue, eats dinner during the performance and so on, so that made it pretty odd as well.
In 1990…well, ‘nuff said. It made my list of top 10 shows ever in my life, and I’ve seen so many shows that that’s REALLY saying something. They were phenomenal, beyond belief, amazing, and so on. Incredibly energetic. They also sounded absolutely fabulous, better than any band I had ever seen up until that point.
So, back to Saturday night’s performance, and why I immediately reached for the computer when I got back to my hotel room… Again, the previous night, they were really fantastic. It was definitely the second best I had ever seen them perform, second only to the 1990 show.
This night, however, they were f***ing incredible. I mean, absolutely f***ing incredible and I don’t swear much! The set list, the energy, EVERYTHING…oh my goodness! They played for nearly 3 hours and yet seemed to just have more and more energy as the night went on. Again, every note of every song was perfect. The set list was amazing in its’ own right, a total dream for a diehard. They seemed to focus on songs that are fan favorites, a combination of more pop oriented songs and some more obscure tracks. Strangely, they stayed away from playing any of their longer, more progressive songs. Could they be saving these for the Sunday performance? Could they do this sort of amazing performance again the following evening? Was that even possible? That wouldn’t even be human, would it?
Steve Hogarth (H), both nights really but especially this night…you would have thought that he was twenty years old the way he was jumping around. It was like 1990 all over again! And, again considering that North American audiences have only had rare occasions to see the band play, we finally got to hear a bunch of the songs that we never got to hear along the way.
The place was just crazy. Everybody was so unbelievably into this show and the energy just kept building and building. At one point (per someone else's notes, it was right after "Afraid of Sunlight"), about a little more than halfway through the performance, the audience just started clapping and applauding, as if the band had left the stage and we were trying to bring them back for an encore…but they hadn’t left. It totally puzzled the band. They didn’t know what happened or what they had done. Pete shrugged his shoulders and said sort of half into the microphone to the other guys in the band, “I don’t know…what did we do?” The cheering just went on and on and on, so much so that Mark Kelly even came out from behind the keyboards and waved to the audience. I think the band was very genuinely taken aback by the love of this audience on this night. In all my years of concert going and such I have never seen an audience love a band more…period.
Everything at these shows was perfect: the energy, the sound, the venue, the crowd, the lighting, the stage, the songs, and so on. The lighting especially was phenomenal and it was a real treat since the lighting had been pretty sparse the last 2 times I saw them live. It’s amazing the difference it makes. Steve Hogarth’s voice, as always, was absolutely breathtakingly amazing. I have no idea how he can sing so long, so loud, and so very high and never lose his voice. He truly must have the greatest voice in rock music and he can give so much variety to the music. He can go from super high crescendo styled notes to also some of the prettiest, most lush sounds I’ve ever heard in all of my years of listening.
Ironically, earlier that day when sitting in my hotel room, I actually did have a few doubts about coming on this trip, mostly due to the rainy weather of Montreal and again just not feeling the greatest, causing me a lack of motivation to sight see. I really didn’t feel well going into this night’s performance at all; somehow the show cured me (coupled with the Advil, of course). It was on this night that I completely got my money’s worth and then some. I think this night was what a Marillion Fan Weekend is supposed to be.
There were some interesting crowd moments to be had. Right before the show began, I was slightly nervous about the arrangement of people around me. A man in his late 40’s/early 50’s and I’d assume his wife had been standing just a tad in front of me and to my right. As show time got closer, somehow they had changed positions and the wife was now directly in front of me. This was fine because she was rather short and I could easily see over her without an issue. Oddly, though, she started backing up little by little for no apparent reason, all the while leaving some space in front of her. She just kept doing this over and over until she eventually bumped into me. Then, she turned around, looked at me funny, moved up a little, and then did it all over again. After the third or fourth time of this routine, she turned around and gave me a dirty look and so I said, “I’m not moving…”, simply because I thought she was looking at me strangely, like I was the one moving closer and bumping into her although my feet hadn’t even moved once. To my shock, she responded harshly in a light French accent, “Yes, but can you a little please?! You’re breathing on my neck!” I had no response for this. Evidently, I shouldn’t breathe in public places! To make it even more odd, my nasal passages were fairly open and clear so I wasn’t even breathing heavily or anything. Needless to say, I did my best to slowly work my way to the left and then finally in front of both of them. If my breath was annoying them then maybe having to look at the back of my 6 foot 1 inch body and head would be better! Of course, then I got stuck behind a guy who insisted on swaying from side to side in an abnormal fashion for ¾ of the show, constantly coming in and out of my sightline. Luckily, he was just short enough to not completely block my view.
It was announced at the beginning of the show that the idea for this night’s performance was that the band would count backwards from the years since Steve Hogarth had joined and play one song that they had written in each year. There did appear to possibly be a few minor discrepancies, such as I do believe they skipped a year here or there. There were also some minor details that were a bit off, like when H stated, “…from 1996…here’s “Afraid of Sunlight””, and yet that album came out in 1995. Still, considering the outcome and how awesome the evening was, who cares! They basically began in 2008 and then worked their way back to 1990.
Again, I won’t go through every single song and instead comment only on the standout moments for me. One of my favorite songs and moments was “Somewhere Else”, a truly gorgeous tune that seems to perhaps have some personal roots in it as well. During the bridge area, H brought out a megaphone, ala Tom Waits, and sang, “…Mr. Taurus ate a thesaurus…made the girls cry and skipped straight to the chorus…Mr. Taurus had a great fall…all the king’s horses were no good at all…” It had a awesome look and sound to it.
“Out of this World” was also fantastic, and extremely eerie. It was one of the tracks that I had most wanted to hear, being one of my all time favorites, and it truly didn’t disappoint, although it affected me differently than I was expecting. H explained that the song’s lyrics had been building within him for a long time prior to actually writing it down and were based around a time when he was fairly young. Evidently, he was flipping channels on the TV with his mother and they happened upon a story about a man who was, as the songs says, traveling “300 miles an hour on water in your purpose built machine no one dared to call a boat…”. As they played the song, actual film footage of the original news story played on the back screen, showing the man in question, Donald Campbell, who had piloted the Bluebird K7 watercraft on January 4th, 1967, at an amazing speed of approximately 320mph and ultimately died after the craft took flight, crashing head first into the water. This also included some chilling shots from the funeral procession during the closing verse, which I now understood why the keyboard droning notes were there in such a sad manner. It added a really chilling affect to the track and I understood the song in a whole new way than previously. I don’t think I’ll ever hear this song the same way again and it truly moved me. There is some excellent information on Donald Campbell on the web and a great blog entry about the raising of Bluebird K7 on the Marillion website. Both Steve Hogarth and Steve Rothery attended the event since the song "Out of this World" actually inspired the project of the raising of the watercraft in 2001. You can read about it at http://www.marillion.com/news/2001/20010308.htm.
At some point, H mentioned how most of us didn’t get a chance to see the band on the recent “Happiness is the Road” tour, and mentioned that it was “great” and that we should have been there. A crowd member yelled out, “You should have been here!” H was speechless for a moment, slightly embarrassed, and said, “Yes, you’re right, we should have been here…but we were too busy buying powder blue guitars and so we couldn’t…” referencing his new-ish Rickenbacker 360 Blue Boy guitar that he was holding at the time (see below). Being the Rickenbacker fanatic that I am, this really tickled me.
The set ended with the dismally triumphant “The Great Escape” from 1994’s “Brave” album, one of their true masterwork albums. When the band reappeared after the break, H dedicated the next song, which was “No One Can”, to a couple in the audience that evidently had gotten married in Vegas one or two days prior and then flew out to the Marillion Weekend to spend their honeymoon. As H put it, “…that’s diehard!” The refrain of “…no one can take you away from me now…” seemed absolutely appropriate.
After playing “The Party”, the band took another break in preparation for the encore. I think it was about 12:00am by this time and yet you would have thought that it was 8pm from the energy and livelihood of the audience. Once again, just like on the previous night, the audience broke into the stomping chant of “Play! Play! Play!!!” The band remerged and the cheers shook the foundation of the theater, as if the audience had never seen the band before.
It was at this time that a woman’s voice could be heard echoing throughout the theater loud and clear. Her pitch was absolutely shrill and not one word of what she said was audible. I feel confident that she was actually saying something specific but all that could be heard was “Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!” H heard this and said, “What was that?!” Again, “Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!” rang out. H laughed to himself and said something like, “I didn’t get one word of that!!”
There were other amusing moments of audience interaction as well. There was a lady who was yelling for the song “Beautiful” and someone evidently tried to even bribe H to play it earlier that day in his hotel. H commented on it, claimed he took the bribe, and said, “…but we’re not going to play it anyway,” with a big smile on his face. Right afterwards, someone yelled out another song title of which I didn’t hear and H said, “No, but we are going to play it tomorrow! I promise!”
The encore began with the final song in their countdown, from the year 1990. It was “Cover My Eyes”, one of their earlier singles, and the crowd was just roaring along with H through the refrains, trying their best to hit those insanely high notes. H, meanwhile, was running around the stage crazily, jumping up and down, etc., so much so that I couldn’t possibly snap a good picture of him since it kept blurring. Again, major flashbacks to the 1990 show!
Then, it got even more intense when the band launched into two old Fish (pre Hogarth) era tunes: “Slainte Mhath”, and then finally ending on “Garden Party”. I seriously thought that the building was going to fall down due to how much everyone was going crazy. There wasn’t a soul in the house that wasn’t singing at the top of their lungs, without their arms raised into the air to the beat of the music, clapping, dancing, you name it. It truly was a party in all senses of the term.
All I can say was that I was seriously completely blown away by this night’s performance; by everything. I’ve never experienced anything quite like this on this level. And to think that there was yet another night to go – oh my gosh?! Job or no job, how could I NOT have come to this??? Marillion have been my favorite band for a very long time now, nearly 20 years worth of time. If I hadn’t already known, it’s nights like this one that really make me understand the deep connection that I have with their work. There is no other band like them, period.
To be continued…
(Saturday Night’s Set List)
(2008) This Train is my Life
(2007) Somewhere Else
(2006) Real Tears for Sale
(2005) A State of Mind
(2004) The Damage
(2003) Genie
(2002) Fantastic Place
(2001) When I Meet God
(2000) Map of the World
(1999) A Legacy
(1998) Cathedral Wall
(1997) Estonia
(1996) Afraid of Sunlight
(1995) Out of this World
(1994) The Great Escape
(1993) Falling from the Moon
(Break)
(1992) No One Can
(1991) The Party
(Encore)
(1990) Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)
Slainte Mhath
Garden Party
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Marillion Weekend, April 3-5, 2009 - Part 2 of 4
Friday Night’s Performance, April 3rd, 2009 at Theatre L’Olympia, Montreal, Quebec
(For anyone interested in hearing some of Marillion’s work, you can go directly to their website at http://www.marillion.com/music/racket/crash.htm and either have a free CD sent to you or you can simply download it…again, all for free. What have you got to lose?)
(NOTE: All quotes listed in these articles are to the very best of my memory and are not to be taken verbatim. Set lists are also via memory, and whereas I’m pretty confident that I have all the songs listed here, the nightly order might be slightly out of whack.
Also, the below pictures are actually from Saturday and Sunday night since I didn’t bring my camera on Friday.)
Seasons End
I actually saw the “Seasons End” Tour at the Palace in Hollywood, CA, in March of 1990. I was only 19 years old at the time and living in Phoenix, AZ. It was my first ever concert that I traveled out of town to see and little did I know how many more such trips I would take in the future. Hollywood terrified me at that age and it was one of the first times I was traveling out of town without my parents by my side, instead accompanied by a couple of friends of mine. The show that night absolutely blew me away, though, and has ever since made my list of top ten shows that I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve seen a phenomenally large number of performances. I can still remember that show pretty vividly. I will never forget lead singer Steve Hogarth jumping up on top of the stack of speakers on the stage, with one arm raised in the air like an army sergeant trying to rally his troops forward, during “Heart of Lothian”. Absolutely incredible…
Marillion had announced beforehand that they would play the entire “Seasons End” album on night one of the Marillion Weekend. They actually played the entire album on the 1990 tour as well so this was to be a bit of nostalgia for me. Regardless, it had been almost 5 years since I had last seen them live and so I was pretty damn excited and almost didn’t care what they played.
The opening act, Sun Domingo, came on about one minute after I arrived at the theater. I was pleasantly surprised by them and found them really rather enjoyable and likeable. The musicianship was really top notch, especially the bassist whom was also the lead vocalist. It was just the kind of “warm up” that I needed while the Advil that I took at the hotel was starting to kick in and relieve my headache from the day’s traveling. By the time they were finished, excitement was really building in the air.
It was then that I started to look around me, at the people, the theater, etc. The Theatre L’Olympia was really an interesting looking place, with a sort of Arabian-esque stage set up which oddly seemed a perfect visual match for Marillion. They also appeared to have a lot of lighting available which was what I was hoping for. The people in the theater were an interesting mix of locals and fellow travelers like myself. Ages seemed to range mostly from 20 to 60 with some people bringing the entire family, including children. The theater was definitely crowded but not over crowded, so we basically all still had room to breathe and be reasonably comfortable. The theater’s main floor was tiered so that you could choose what sort of angle you preferred to watch from and how many heads would block your view.
It was obvious that they were going to be filming the performance since there was a large boom and camera pivoting up and down over our heads at stage right. There was also a lady in a really cool outfit taking pictures of the audience, trying her best to get people to cheer, raise their arms, etc.
As the crew did the necessary preparation work for the performance, the Marillion slideshow started behind the drum set, showing a collage of photos that fans had sent in displaying their Marillion t-shirts and gear while standing in front of various locales. Marillion had asked fans to send in these sorts of photos awhile ago but I just completely forgot about it. At the end of the slideshow, the word “Welcome” displayed…and a huge cheer erupted from the audience. Again, I couldn’t believe I was there and had made it! Not long afterwards the lights went down. The performance began as the first droning notes of “The King of Sunset Town” shook through the theater while the band took their places on stage. The audience went ballistic!
They sounded as perfect as always. Marillion have always been a band that sounded nearly identical live as they sound on album, almost to an amazing likeness that doesn’t seem possible. Even when playing songs that they probably haven’t played in 15 or more years, they still sounded as if they played them every single day. This night was absolutely no exception.
(For anyone interested in hearing some of Marillion’s work, you can go directly to their website at http://www.marillion.com/music/racket/crash.htm and either have a free CD sent to you or you can simply download it…again, all for free. What have you got to lose?)
(NOTE: All quotes listed in these articles are to the very best of my memory and are not to be taken verbatim. Set lists are also via memory, and whereas I’m pretty confident that I have all the songs listed here, the nightly order might be slightly out of whack.
Also, the below pictures are actually from Saturday and Sunday night since I didn’t bring my camera on Friday.)
Seasons End
I actually saw the “Seasons End” Tour at the Palace in Hollywood, CA, in March of 1990. I was only 19 years old at the time and living in Phoenix, AZ. It was my first ever concert that I traveled out of town to see and little did I know how many more such trips I would take in the future. Hollywood terrified me at that age and it was one of the first times I was traveling out of town without my parents by my side, instead accompanied by a couple of friends of mine. The show that night absolutely blew me away, though, and has ever since made my list of top ten shows that I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve seen a phenomenally large number of performances. I can still remember that show pretty vividly. I will never forget lead singer Steve Hogarth jumping up on top of the stack of speakers on the stage, with one arm raised in the air like an army sergeant trying to rally his troops forward, during “Heart of Lothian”. Absolutely incredible…
Marillion had announced beforehand that they would play the entire “Seasons End” album on night one of the Marillion Weekend. They actually played the entire album on the 1990 tour as well so this was to be a bit of nostalgia for me. Regardless, it had been almost 5 years since I had last seen them live and so I was pretty damn excited and almost didn’t care what they played.
The opening act, Sun Domingo, came on about one minute after I arrived at the theater. I was pleasantly surprised by them and found them really rather enjoyable and likeable. The musicianship was really top notch, especially the bassist whom was also the lead vocalist. It was just the kind of “warm up” that I needed while the Advil that I took at the hotel was starting to kick in and relieve my headache from the day’s traveling. By the time they were finished, excitement was really building in the air.
It was then that I started to look around me, at the people, the theater, etc. The Theatre L’Olympia was really an interesting looking place, with a sort of Arabian-esque stage set up which oddly seemed a perfect visual match for Marillion. They also appeared to have a lot of lighting available which was what I was hoping for. The people in the theater were an interesting mix of locals and fellow travelers like myself. Ages seemed to range mostly from 20 to 60 with some people bringing the entire family, including children. The theater was definitely crowded but not over crowded, so we basically all still had room to breathe and be reasonably comfortable. The theater’s main floor was tiered so that you could choose what sort of angle you preferred to watch from and how many heads would block your view.
It was obvious that they were going to be filming the performance since there was a large boom and camera pivoting up and down over our heads at stage right. There was also a lady in a really cool outfit taking pictures of the audience, trying her best to get people to cheer, raise their arms, etc.
As the crew did the necessary preparation work for the performance, the Marillion slideshow started behind the drum set, showing a collage of photos that fans had sent in displaying their Marillion t-shirts and gear while standing in front of various locales. Marillion had asked fans to send in these sorts of photos awhile ago but I just completely forgot about it. At the end of the slideshow, the word “Welcome” displayed…and a huge cheer erupted from the audience. Again, I couldn’t believe I was there and had made it! Not long afterwards the lights went down. The performance began as the first droning notes of “The King of Sunset Town” shook through the theater while the band took their places on stage. The audience went ballistic!
They sounded as perfect as always. Marillion have always been a band that sounded nearly identical live as they sound on album, almost to an amazing likeness that doesn’t seem possible. Even when playing songs that they probably haven’t played in 15 or more years, they still sounded as if they played them every single day. This night was absolutely no exception.
They also looked fabulous. With the string of “older” bands getting back together and touring over the past couple of years, ala Genesis, the Police, and so on, I was mildly afraid that Marillion too would look, well, older. Surprisingly, they looked no different, in fact, maybe they looked better than they had 5 years earlier. Lead singer Steve Hogarth’s voice was clearly no less magnificent, with his amazing singing range and sound echoing through the place with soaring intensity as always. The lighting also was incredible, drenching the stage in colors and adding visual depth and atmosphere to perfectly compliment the music. It was positively dreamy.
Once “The King of Sunset Town” ended, the band was met with a mammoth amount of cheers, yells, you name it, all coming from a North American audience that hasn’t ever gotten their fill of Marillion due to their lack of touring here. I think everyone, very much including myself, was a bit in denial that they were actually standing before us and playing. It took awhile for this reality to settle in.
Once Steve Hogarth (who prefers to go by H since there are two Steve’s in the band) was able to talk over the cheers, he yelled out with a huge smile, “See?! I told you I’d bring them back!” pointing backwards towards the band. “You’ve gotta have faith!” It was the perfect comment because every time I have seen Marillion live I always have to wonder if I’ll ever have the opportunity to see them again. And from here, the playing of the “Seasons End” album continued onward in glorious fashion.
At some point, I don’t recall the precise moment, H introduced the band members. Pointing to the bassist, H yelled, “Ladies and gentlemen, Pete Trewavas!” Now, I didn’t hear how this started personally but someone evidently let out a joking “boo!” H immediately commented on it. “Boo?!” Looking at Pete he asked, “What did you do now?” Pete Trewavas walked up to his microphone and said jokingly in a great English accent, “I don’t know! What did I do? What did I do this time??” This of course started an ongoing “boo!” session all weekend whenever anyone mentioned Pete which just got funnier as it went on.
I won’t go through every single song of the set, which can be found below, by the way, but instead I’ll mention highlights. The title track of “Seasons End” was as amazing as always, one of their truly gorgeous tunes and one of my personal all time favorites. “Berlin” really sounded fantastic and for some reason stood out to me more than usual as it echoed throughout the theater.
H also talked at some point about how great it was to be back in Montreal, and how he had been listening to Joni Mitchell’s “Court and Spark” album on the way over, in homage to the vicinity. “Bloody brilliant,” he said, and I would totally agree since it is one of the true great albums. H also commented, “You know, as we were relearning these songs, we were surprised by how short the album was. Albums in the 80’s were much shorter than today, huh?” The crowd agreed. “So, then I’m looking at the songs on “Court and Spark”,” H continued, “and I see songs that are 2 minutes, 3 minutes in length.” H stopped and smiled. “Hell, in a Marillion song, we haven’t even gotten to verse 1 yet!” The crowd cheered ecstatically. H laughed, “I guess it just takes us longer to climax,” and of course some guy in the audience yelled out, “Viagra!”
When the time came later in the set, H breathed a sigh into the microphone and said, “Okay, this next song. What can we say? We were young…” Many audience members laughed along since the song was to be “Hooks in You”, a very late 80’s-ish almost hair band sounding song that’s not very typical of their music. H: “And so, if you’d like to relive your youth along with us, well, then sing along…” It’s never been one of my favorite tunes but this night, it just rocked the house and I couldn’t help but smile. H jumped all over the stage as if he really was 20 years old again, even more or less copying his movements in the “Hooks in You” video.
When the “Seasons End” album was finished, H announced that they’d be taking a 5 minute break. The crowd waited patiently, chatting amongst itself. When the band emerged again, H announced that their departure was premature and that they were supposed to play the “obscure B-Sides” from the “Seasons End” album prior to taking the break. And so, they launched into “The Bell in the Sea” and “The Release”. Immediately afterwards, H said, “Ok, ok…3 minutes…we’ll be right back…then we’ll play some new songs from the “Happiness is the Road” album…”
At this point, once a couple of minutes had passed, the crowd started chanting, “Play! Play! Play!” and stomping it’s feet, enough so to rock the entire building. Moments later, the encore began.
Another moment of note on that first night was when Steve Rothery (their guitarist) had his back to the audience before a song, looking or messing around with something in the corner by his amplifier. H saw this, waited a couple moments patiently, shook his head, then smiled at the crowd and said: “I don’t know what he’s doing over there either.” H thought a moment and then said, “You see, he keeps a small furry creature in that corner and it doesn’t do well in hot sweaty rooms. So, he needs to attend to it on occasion.” Steve Rothery turned to look at him, eyebrows up, with a look of total disbelief, like ‘I can’t believe you just said that’. It was a priceless moment.
The show ended with the title track of “Happiness is the Road” of which it truly was for me on that day. It had been a long exhausting day of travel, frantically trying to get to the show on time, but for that two and a half hours, well, nothing else mattered. It was true bliss. I could hardly wait for the next night which in all likelihood would be even better, if that was even possible.
The day ended in typical fashion: I made my way out of the theater and found that it was raining pretty steadily. I hustled over to the nearest Metro station as quickly as possible and purchased a ticket to get me back to the vicinity of my hotel. Once there, I had a couple of blocks to walk outside. I think I collapsed onto the bed around 12:30am and nearly passed out from exhaustion but with a smile on my face, nonetheless.
To be continued…
(Friday Night’s Set List)
The King of Sunset Town
Easter
The Uninvited Guest
Seasons End
Holloway Girl
Berlin
After Me
Hooks in You
The Space…
(5 minute break…)
The Bell in the Sea
The Release
(3 minute break…)
The Man from the Planet Marzipan
Essence
Asylum Satellite #1
Whatever is Wrong with You
Happiness is the Road
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