Last night my spectacular wife took me to see a concert as a preamble to our tenth anniversary. The concert was held in a giant concrete egg. But more on than in a moment. You see, we have been married for almost ten years now, and we really wanted to do something big to mark the occasion. We considered having a huge party, or taking a long and far-away trip, but sadly those things would have required me making some sort of steady income over the past several years, so we are instead doing many smaller things, and this concert was the first.
Another thing that you should know is that we live in Vermont. I’m not trying to say that good concerts and shows do not come to Vermont, because they do. Sometimes. But certainly you are not guaranteed to see your favorite artists if you live up here, because the large majority of acts come here, at most, rarely. With this in mind you will understand why we had to drive three hours to Albany to look for a place we had never been before to see our favorite 5-voice a cappella youtube-star sing-off-winning rock band, Pentatonix.
Our GPS, Jill, was very misleading as to the location of “The Egg,” and we drove around in circles for a few moments before my wife saw, through some imposing governmental buildings, what looked like a mammoth egg made of concrete hidden away in a raised plaza. We parked and wandered that direction and, sure enough, we had found the theater! Here is a picture of my wife in front of it.
Okay, well, I guess it is more of a picture of my wife in front of two-thirds of the bottom half of it, but I couldn’t get back any further to take the picture, due to the rampaging crowds that, according to a girl we later met in an elevator, were trying to break into Bret Michaels’ trailer due to a lack of security around said trailer. No, I don’t know what Bret Michaels was doing there either.
Anyway, after searching grumpily for food at a variety of out-of-business, for sale, and/or boarded up restaurants, we bought some overpriced sausages from a street vendor who had set up shop near Bret Michaels’ trailer and we walked into The Egg.
The show did not disappoint. The crowd was over-the-top enthusiastic, to the point where the various members of the group were consistently taken aback by the super-excitement of this Albany crowd. They got three standing ovations in the middle of the show for crying out loud! And what a show it was!
Pentatonix performed many of their songs from The Sing-Off television show, as well as numbers from their first album and their various Youtube videos, but what really got the crowd going was the crazy stuff they could do that much of the audience had not seen before. For instance Avi, the group’s bass, did some Mongolian overtone singing in which he was able to sing two notes at once, which is really incredible to hear live if you never have before. And Kevin, their vocal percussionist, did some cello-boxing, which is basically playing the cello while beatboxing. You can see him do it on Youtube, and it is kind of mindblowingly amazing.
If I had to list any complaints it would be that the bass and percussion mikes were turned up a little too high, making it sometimes difficult to hear the other three members’ harmonies over the whole thing, and also that I was constantly terrified of being in a giant egg that I felt might roll away down the streets of Albany at any second, crushing civilians and buildings alike as we people inside were shaken into an audience omelet.
Fortunately this did not happen and we left The Egg alive and happy. I had mentioned in the car on the way to the concert that, in some ways, I was worried about being too old to go to a popular concert put on by 20-year-olds, but when we arrived we saw teenagers, six-year-olds, families, people our age, older people, middle-aged people, and one hilarious older woman who was rocking so hard I was literally concerned she was going to break her seat. It was such fun for everyone there, and I have to tell you that I clearly have the best wife ever. Except, now how am I ever going to do something for her that tops this? To be continued…
