Tanglewood 8/30/14

People told me that the traffic at Tanglewood is terrible, so I got there at 2:20 for our 4:00 event.  They wouldn’t let us in until 4, so we waited outside the gate until they would let us in.

We got to hear the sound check, where Josh sang 4 songs with the orchestra.  It was heart wrenchingly beautiful.  His voice sounded totally amazing.  That made me really look forward to this concert.

Sigh.

Lily was so good as to include me in her purchase of a block of seats for Grobanites.  Since this was a group sale, we got great seats at a low price.  Well, at least in principle they were great seats.  I tweeted Josh about the block and he did acknowledge our group.  I don’t know if it was because of my tweet, or if he knew about it from the boards.  In any case, he did know we were there.  If anyone has any doubt that he follows what fans are doing, they shouldn’t

I was right next to the stage.  I was also right next to a speaker.  It was way too loud for me.  I had to wear ear plugs. Even when it was quiet enough for me to take them off, Josh’s voice sounded harsh, because of the proximity of the amplifiers.   With ear plugs, it was a deadened sound, without the subtlety that I know Josh’s voice has.

I spent the whole concert wishing I had not bought a ticket and were out at the gate listening from where I first heard Josh, from where he sounded glorious.

Even with ear plugs, I could feel every strum of Andre Manga’s bass guitar as a vibration in my collar bone.  It felt vaguely like being assaulted.

At least this time I wrote down the set list, which I think was the same as at Mohegan Sun.  I thought this was a nice selection with songs from each album.

Changing Colors

February Song (includes Josh on piano)

Allejate

Vincent

Alla Luce

Falling Slowly

Play me

Caruso

Christian's solos

Voce (includes Josh on drums)

Happy in my heartache

Per Te

Children will listen / nothing's going to harm you

To where to you are

I believe when I fall in love

You raise me up

Smile (encore: with only piano — I should have taken off my ear plugs for this one)

I wonder when I’m going to decide that Josh has tortured me with sound quality issues once too often.  

Generally, he seemed relaxed and happy, which was quite the contrast with the Straight to You tour, where he seemed tortured.  He commented at Mohegan Sun that he had gotten back together with the woman he wrote “Happy in my Heartache” about.  I’m not sure if he’s still with her, but he said that he felt awkward when she asked if this song were about her.  

His voice generally sounded good.  He really seems to have come into his own with his voice, knowing his instrument and how to control it.  The only exception was the high notes of “Per Te,” where he sounded strained.

I did feel the absence of Ruslan.  Ruslan is one of those people with a very fine ear, like David Foster.  There was something about the concert at the Allen Room, where I first heard him — where there was a slightly crisper, more organized sound to the music, a bit more of a beat, a bit more insistent — that really hooked me.  Mark Stephens has a different sound, more dreamy, more of a Debussy/Monet water lilies type.  

I got to see the operation of some of the stage lights that created special effects, because they were rotating right next to me.  That was somewhat interesting.

Josh was kind enough to tell the lighting people when they were shining lights directly into people’s eyes.  He asked them to stop it, which they didn’t do immediately, but did eventually.

I went to the fan event entitled “FANily Reunion.”  This was a nice event.  I am grateful to the many people who worked on it.  

I got to meet Janle from the UK who had read my blog way over there.  Wow!  The Internet is amazing!  She told me that Josh sounded great at the concert at Hyde Park that I had blogged about, because he didn’t sound good on the video.

I had a similar experience with hearing Josh at Radio City Music Hall when he appeared on America’s Got Talent with Forte.  He sounded ok in person, but the video didn’t sound good.

I’m not quite sure what this is about, but I think I noticed at Mohegan Sun that they turned up the orchestra volume on the high notes in “Per Te” to cover his strained sound — and they might have done this at Radio City Music Hall as well.  

I found myself frustrated again as I did one time when I saw him at the Stage Door at Avery Fisher Hall  http://www.twitlonger.com/show/kjlk02  Seeing him on stage, he seems so familiar. I’ve watched so many YouTube videos of him.  I feel like I’ve memorized every gesture.  I feel like, over the years of watching interviews and reading tweets, I’ve really gotten to know him.  Sitting so close at Tanglewood, accentuated that feeling. Yet I’m just one of a crowd: no way to have a serious conversation with him, no way for him to get to know *me.*

Even the FANily event was tough.  I don’t feel very connected to most of those people.  I wasn’t involved in organizing the event.  Those people seemed very close to each other.  Of course, I was going through chemo when the event was taking shape, so I was in no condition to get involved, but that resulted in me being on the outside.

On the way home, I listened to my new Gordon Bok CD.  Gordon Bok is a Maine folk singer.  He has a number of albums, though he never got to be a big star.  I liked his album.  It reminded me of the kind of concerts that I’ve usually been more comfortable with: small concerts in schools, colleges and churches — or in concert halls — not concerts with a lot of amplification or fancy lighting effects.  That was what I heard in the Before We Begin concert in New Haven, when I first heard Josh (2010??).  I was spoiled by that.

This whole mass music scene is just very unpleasant.

addendum
--------------
Josh revealed the name of his backup singing group at both Mohegan Sun and Tanglewood: "East Cost Inspirational Singers."  He often just says "these great singers," so it was nice to hear a name of the group.

Addendum 9/2/14
-----------------------
I had an afterthought.  My mom was a teacher.  She always said that you never really understand a subject until you try to teach it to someone else.  I'm thinking about the mentoring that Josh has done on a couple of TV programs recently, most notably Rising Star.  I'm thinking that his teaching experience has helped him as a performer.  He looked and sounded much more at ease than what I remembered.

Second Addendum 9/2/14
--------------------------------
I stayed in the Rodeway Inn in Lee, Massachusetts.  This is a motel a few miles from Tanglewood.  It was a very pleasant place, and, I think, a bit cheaper than some of the others.

Addendum 9/9/14
-----------------------
I was just sort of having a slight flashback to Josh walking out of the tent at the FANily reunion.  His security guard, Darren, who we all know, put his arm protectively around Josh as Josh walked out.  It seemed sort of sweet at the time, but, when I think of it, I do wonder if that's really the best way to protect him.  If something untoward were to happen, which we would hope it wouldn't, of course, but if something like that happened, shouldn't Darren have his hands free to protect Josh, not have his arm around Josh?

Also, it looked as if Darren thought that Josh needed some kind of comforting.  I wonder why that would be.

Also, I saw Josh's parents who looked great.  Lindy has lost a lot of weight and is almost as thin as Josh now. 

Josh this Summer, and Mohegan Sun

It's been a while since I blogged.  Part of that has been my health crisis, with the cancer, being too preoccupied with that to think as much about Josh.  Another part has been the career change that Josh inspired me to try, to try to become a performer myself.

I've been taking a lot of classes and doing a lot of practice performances, tho nothing paid as yet. A lot of what I've been doing has been improv, something I learned about through Josh.  He often does funny little improv things on stage and on TV, having apparently been trained as a child -- rumor has it that he was trained at a summer camp at Second City.  Second City is the most famous comedy school in the country.

I haven't been there yet, but if my health holds, which it may not, as the prognosis is not good, tho I'm ok right now, I'm going to try to go there next summer.  They have a summer college program.

So, I missed the Toronto musical theater event with Rufus Wainright.  I was attending a weekend improv camp that weekend.  I also had tickets to see Barbara Cook that same weekend.  Josh has sung with her at least twice.  I was hoping to blog about her, learning more about what she's like in person, but I had to give my ticket to another Grobie, so that I could go improvise with friends.

I love Ontario.  I would love to get back there soon.  The people there are *so* nice.  I did get to Ottawa a couple of years ago.  I loved Ottawa, passionately.

Curiously, I'm getting more active on my real name FB account.  As I meet more and more improvisers, I'm interacting with them online more than with Grobies.  They're mostly 20 or 30 years younger than I am.

That's good for someone with mild Asperger's Syndrome.  We mostly do better with people who are older or younger than we are rather than with our peers.  My friends have tended to be older, but they're not able to be very available for the sorts of activities I like to do.

Curiously, even tho these people are so much younger than I, they're much more experienced performers, so really I'm the youngest of the bunch.  Most of them have degrees in performance, sometimes advanced degrees, and some have years of professional acting experience as well.

I thought the Toronto event was wise for Josh.  He wants to get onto Broadway.  Tho the nature of the event will likely encourage those who insist that Josh is gay or bi, something I don't buy into at all, you have to understand that most of the guys who are involved with Broadway are gay.  If Josh is going to make it on Broadway, he's going to have to hobnob with gay guys -- and they're going to have to deal with his stereotypical straight, white, male dance phobia.

I do expect that he could plow through that, if he chose to. We've seen that he can dance, being especially strong doing farcical, improv dancing.  But, of course, he's not a tremendously graceful person. The very awkwardness that makes some people suspect that he's gay, would likely prevent him excelling in dancing.

Personally, I suspect that this awkwardness is from a mild neurological disorder like Asperger's Syndrome or some very slight cerebral palsy, not because he's gay.  I also suspect he may have some repetitive stress injury from so much piano playing that gives him such awkwardness with his hands. When I saw him up close in 2012 he even seemed to have trouble holding a mike.  I wish he would go to a neurologist and get this checked out.

I was deliquent in watching Rising Star this summer. I don't get ABC, there being a ridge between me and the transmitter, and I refuse to get cable. I was too busy this summer to get to many re-runs. I did finally watch two on the ABC website.  What I saw wasn't very exciting.

Others have said this.  Only Jesse really seemed like a star all along.   The others mostly just weren't that great.

Also, it seemed to me that ABC just didn't quite click with the special effects.  Other shows have done more with lighting, scenery, and placement and timing of backup musicians and have succeeded in making a more exciting backdrop for their fledgling performers.

Also, I didn't think Josh did as good a job generating excitement as the people I've seen in similar positions on other shows.  He's always been sort of anti-glitz.  He performs in simple clothing.  His musicians perform in simple clothing.  There's no dancing.  The lighting effects are restrained.  He focuses on the music, relying on that to sell his work.

Unfortunately, that's not really what the masses want.  We Grobies are a different lot. We're looking for subtle, for musical creativity, for different. We want to hear how Josh will fuse pop influences with classical, modern classical, jazz, and world music.  We pay attention to what his band members are doing musically.  If we were the sort to want a Katy Perry, who is very glitzy and packaged, by a team of handlers, we wouldn't be Grobies.

Still, it's good that the networks are experimenting with how to make TV more interactive. That's the direction that the entertainment industry has to go.  You see it on YouTube.  My older son won't even go to a movie any more, or a concert, because he's not allowed to talk.  When he's experiencing content online he can comment.

So, now, to Mohegan Sun.

The weather just couldn't have been nicer for a long drive: sunny, seventies, low humidity.

It took four hours, instead of the normal 2.  It was Friday afternoon, Labor Day weekend.  Not so surprising.   I thought leaving at two would leave me plenty of time, but I got there shortly after six.

Then I followed the lighted signs.  I was supposed to use the "Sky" entrance, but that garage was full. Therefore I went to the Riverside, which was stated to be open.  I couldn't find any parking there and after some searching found myself out on the access road heading away from Mohegan Sun.  That was frustrating.

Fortunately, there was a way to make a U turn and come back.  This time the signs said that Riverside was also full, so I went to Indian Summer.

I was happy to see that Mohegan Sun doesn't charge extra for parking.  This is not something you see much in my area in the suburbs of NYC.  If there's a ramp, you usually have to pay for it.  The only exception I can think of right now is my local hospital, which doesn't charge for their ramp.

Interesting.  Something about how much money is skimmed off gambling and how much is skimmed off health care....

Now, I'm not a gambler. I'm a Quaker. We've been traditionally opposed to gambling. We feel people should be earning their money and that gambling is a trap for the unsophisticated, and often for people who don't have enough money to be risking like that.

I expected to hate the place, but they won me over immediately because of their restrooms.  They have a LOT of restrooms, with a lot of stalls, and each toilet has one of those moving plastic seat covers like they have in O'Hare Airport.  In the arena there must have been at least 30 toilets in each women's restroom.  There was no such thing as a restroom line, even right after Josh's concert, which was a predominantly female event -- and completely filled.  The restrooms were all clean, and well maintained and always had available stalls.

YES, Mohegan Sun, you won me over with the restrooms.  I love you.

For those of you who haven't been, Mohegan Sun is a huge complex with a hotel, an arena, and a huge casino that is interspersed with a shopping mall, restaurants, and bars.  It's not that easy to find the restaurants and bars, because almost everything that looks like a restaurant or bar is actually a hall of gaming tables or slot machines.  I guess gamblers don't eat or drink so much.  They have other concerns.

The casino is divided into regions that have names like "Casino of the Wind," just like the parking garages have names like "Indian Summer."  That's good.  It's easier to remember than "West" or "B," which are the sort of names that other places use.

The ceilings are high everywhere, maybe 30 feet high or more.  The temperature was cool, even in the crowded arena.  The lighting is a bit dim, like a fancy restaurant, but adequate.  The corridors are very wide.  Even though the place was packed, you never had a feeling of being crowded, though perhaps it was not entirely packed.   Level four of the Indian Summer parking garage did not ever completely fill up.

Most of the people there were over fifty I would say. I didn't know that about casinos that they attract an older crowd, or maybe it's just this one.

The Grobies had specified "Geno's Food Court" for dinner.  I didn't get there until almost seven.  By that time they had all left.  I had gotten my ticket last might from Vivid Seats.  They had gotten theirs from Josh's website, earlier, and they had to get their tickets from will call.  I learned later that they were hanging out there.

"Geno's Food Court" is not near the Indian Summer garage.  It's a bit of a hike.  There are some moderately good signs up at the ceiling, but they just say "restaurants," not which ones.  I had to ask to find Geno's and it wasn't easy to find staff there.

Geno's Food Court did turn out to be a reasonably priced place.  My dinner was $11 plus tax, which isn't bad at all for that sort of place.  Also, I was able to find a gluten free alternative from the Mexican vendor.

Later, I saw some Grobies, who must have been from the fan club, way up front standing and dancing while Josh sang "Voce".  I have always been surprised at hearing Voce live.  Tariqh gets everyone to clap and some people dance.  When I listened to it on the album, I thought it was a dreamy, quiet piece. It's odd to me that people find it so peppy.  But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

I rushed to the arena after dinner, thinking I was late, but actually it was only 7:15, that was how fast I ate -- and how fast Geno's food court was.  They also had these cool plastic gadgets that would buzz and flash blue lights when your dinner was ready.  That was well thought out.

When I got there, the arena was mostly empty.

I was excited to be there.  David Foster has performed there several times.  I was hopeful that if David Foster performed there they must have better acoustics than the Prudential Center, where I've seen Josh twice.  The last time David came to Mohegan Sun, I checked out the ticket prices.  It seemed lke the cheapest tickets were $250.  I didn't want to see him that much.

I found the seats fairly comfortable and there was room for my tote bag under my seat.

The concert started fifteen minutes late.  People were just ambling in for the longest time.  I guess that's understandable, given the size of the place, that people might underestimate how long it would take to get from parking to the arena.

The arena is entirely surrounded by the casino and hotel and does not seem to have an exterior entrance.  It must be on a different level and only accessible by those with passes -- or so I would surmise.

When Josh asked, it seemed like a lot of the people there had never been to one of his concerts before.  They might have been unfamiliar with the place, as I was.  I am hoping that perhaps his appearance on Rising Star has broadened his audience, but perhaps they were just there for the weekend anyway and decided to take in the show.

As I was sitting there, waiting for the concert to start, I was thinking about how hyper Josh is and imagining him bouncing off the walls back stage wanting to charge out and having to wait for all these people to just mosey in.

 I'm still focused on him, rather than them.  Twitter gives me this illusion of his being right next to me all the time, talking to me.  He tweets me sometimes.  I have this sense. almost, that he is my friend.  I've seen backstage videos.  I know what it's usually like back there.  I can visualize him, jumping up and down, running back and forth waiting for the people to get there.

It turned out to be worthwhile.  The place was almost entirely sold out.  Yay!

The acoustics were merciful.  I did not have to put on ear plugs.  It got a little loud in places, but not quite to the point where I pulled them out.  The only thing that hurt my ears was my neighbor shreiking.  I generally could not applaud, because I had to cover my ears after the songs.  She was a middle aged woman in her fifties, like me.  She still could pack a high pitched shriek, just like a young girl.

Generally, Josh sounded excellent.  He was a bit strained on the high notes of "Per Te," but otherwise sounded great. His miking was excellent too, conveying his vocal subtlety well.

I cannot say the same for the miking of the instrumentalists.  Dan Wilson told me on twitter that audio engineers have just never figured out how to mike a large orchestra for an arena.  Yes. They sounded muddy, blurred.

Worse, yet, at least once, they spotlighted Christian for a violin solo and you couldn't hear anything at all.  Other times you could hear him faintly, but not distinctly.  Fortunately, they did have his mike turned up during the musical interlude where he was the featured performer.

Christian did well on that.  I still like Lucia better.  I still crave hearing her live.  I wonder why Josh's touring band has become all male, when it wasn't before.  My imagination goes in prurient places about that.  I feel that there was some kind of a problem before, but I'm not sure what it was.  He opened the Illuminations tour in New Orleans, where Lucia was working at the time, and she didn't perform in the opening concert, even though he tweeted that he hoped she might.  That struck me as odd.

What did Josh sing last night?  I should have written it down.  He opened with that Canadian song about listening to people.  Darn.  It was an extra single on ATE.  It will come back to me. He sang Allejate, Voce, Caruso (which I don't think I've heard live before), Vincent, a medley of Children will Listen (which I hadn't heard him sing before) and Nothing's Going to Harm You, To Where You Are, Falling Slowly, You Raise Me Up to close, and Smile as an encore.  There was more.  I'll try to add them in later.

I've heard most of this stuff before.  I find myself focusing on him.  I take out my binoculars and look him up and down carefully.  He looks good.  He had been looking a bit chubbier for a while, but he's obviously been dieting again.  I worry about him bingeing and yo-yo dieting.

I look at his hands on the mike stand, the double joints, the awkward motions.  I look at his crotch. People on twitter trained me to do that. He's well endowed, but you can't see it that well from the back of the arena using binoculars as you can on some of the YouTube videos from up front.

I watch how he walks around on stage. Relaxed, not quite so hyper as when he was younger.  During the Awake DVD he was running like a madman while singing, which was impressive, but he didn't do that this time. Some motion, but not as much.  He mentioned something in an interview in 2012 about knee surgery.  When I saw him in the Allen Room he did seem to be limping.  Not limping this time, but not so frenetic either.  Age takes its toll, I guess.

 He didn't try to come into the audience or ask for questions.  I guess he's had enough of being fondled.

I'm glad he dropped the white tee shirt.  That really looked sloppy, I thought.  HIs new shirt is charcoal grey or black, which I think looks much better.  I did think he looked best in a navy blue shirt, tho.  I took a course in auditioning for TV and commercials.  In that course, I learned that most white people look best on camera in blues, pinks, purples, and some oranges.  No one looks good in black, white, grey, or earth tones.  Those make people look pale and sickly.  Josh needs to take that course.

When I'm looking, I can't listen as well.  I think he looks splendid up there -- poised, commanding the arena, his rich voice captivating everyone and filling the space. I feel awed that he has tweeted me sometimes.

I tried to record the concert, but my sound recorder ran out of batteries and I had forgotten to bring spares.

I took a few photos of Mohegan sun, which I will try to upload.

It was a long, late drive up here to Tanglewood afterwards.  I couldn't find out where to go to wait and see if Josh would take autographs.  Probably, as I said before, you had to have a pass to get to the stage door.  I stopped for a nap at one point.  I didn't get here until 2.  The route went through  wildernessy area of Connecticut where the exits did not have any open travel services.  Fortunately I have a chamber pot in my car.

I hope to see everyone soon.