Josh at Bethel
I had declared that I would never again go to another Josh Groban concert, after my experience at Nassau Coliseum where the sound was painfully loud and the lights they shone in our eyes were painfully bright.
Then he had 5 livestreams, during the lockdown, which I justified because I could control the volume.
Then he announced that this summer he would have Lucia Micarelli with him.
I first noticed Josh when I was asked to sing O Holy Night in 2009 for my religious group. I didn’t know the song, so I searched on YouTube and found Josh singing it.
That made me curious about Josh and I started watching videos about him. That quickly led me to excerpts from the awake DVD and Lucia. I was stunned by her solo. The video from the DVD has been taken down. It had millions of views. That’s too bad for Lucia, who loses that online credit. They don’t think about the effect on the artist when they take down a video with millions of views. Here’s a fan video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iXuif5JXjs You'll notice that her passion and energy is such that she shreds her bowstrings.
Josh recently put up the Kashmir audio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxBFOYyLC7g
When I saw that video, I felt like the first time Michael Jackson moonwalked. It seemed so utterly transformative compared to anything I had ever heard before. The audience went wild.
I did get the DVD. It’s an amazing thing, that DVD, but one of the things that really impressed me was how Lucia was half Korean – half Italian, Josh was half Protestant – half Jewish (like me), and Tariqh I don’t know, but I wonder how an African American has a Turkish name. Was his father Turkish? I felt that the three of them personified the melting pot. I felt that the vision of them playing so beautifully together was a vision into a brighter, unified future.
I was extremely disappointed to learn that Tariqh was an ongoing part of the act, but Lucia was not. She got to tour with Barbra Streisand after that. That was a good gig, after all – and went on to other things.
I did go see Lucia with Chris Botti at the Blue Note, where she had a lot of wonderful solos. I got to see a solo concert by her at the Unitarian Society near Central Park. But I hadn’t gotten to see her with Josh.
Also, the concert was outdoors. My friend and I could have gone to Jones Beach, but Bethel seemed cheaper. Outdoors, so less COVID risk, and Lucia – I decided to go.
My personal travel was seemingly cursed. My car had issues and was in the shop, so I had to pay more to rent a car for 2 days than I spent on the tickets. When I got the car, I wasted a lot of time trying to start it – as it had a push button start, which I didn’t have experience with. Then, when I got there, I discovered I had brought the wrong envelope – the one with the ads, not the one with the tix – fortunately fixed at the Box Office.
Another unpleasant thing was that I noticed the day before the concert, perusing the Bethel website, that our section price had been reduced from $100 to $60, so we would have been better off buying at the venue rather than the fan presale.
We were quite late and missed most of the pre-show. That was probably just as well. I’m not a big jazz fan. It probably wasn’t my kind of music.
Josh had announced a few days before that Tariqh was out sick, with COVID. I was getting Lucia, but not Tariqh. Not what I had hoped for. Tariqh has been such a fixture in Josh’s concerts. They did get a sub. I did think that I heard at least one case where he was somehow out of sync. Josh praised him, though. Obviously, he had not had much prep time.
It was too loud. I needn’t have expected differently. It wasn’t as bad as the concerts I attended at The Beacon and The Prudential Center, where the sound was so distorted that Josh literally sounded awful. One of the concerts at The Beacon, the one with Cindy Lauper, was so distorted that I couldn’t understand a single word of the single that Josh was premiering at that concert.
Here, I could understand the words. Still, I did feel that there was distortion , which gave an unpleasant edge to Josh’s normally mellow voice. I don’t think that that sort of issue comes through on the YouTube videos.
I did wonder if I would be happier out on the lawn, farther from the speakers. I might have gone if I wasn’t worried about rain. They were renting out lawn chairs.
Also, the sound mixing was poor. When Josh was playing the piano during February Song, after the orchestra got loud, I could see Josh pounding away at the keys, but I could not hear a single piano note over the over-amplified orchestra. I generally couldn’t hear the choral parts at all, either.
Also, when Josh was singing a duet with Lucia, as is common when he sings with Altos, it was hard to hear her. He drowned her out. He sings loudly. She sings quietly. The audio engineers didn’t adequately compensate. The duet with Eleri was better, because she’s a soprano and that is more distinguishable from an auditory point of view.
I love the way Lucia sings: quiet and subtle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXt-8UMg9i4
Josh is often loud. He can drown out most other singers. He recently did a duet with Leslie Odom, who sings quietly. Predictably, the audio engineers didn’t adequately compensate, and Odom was mostly not audible. Josh seems to be plagued with bad audio engineering.
I did have ear plugs for a couple of the songs at the beginning, but later either I got used to it or they turned the volume down. I don’t understand why Josh has loud rock settings on his music. That’s not really the kind of music he does or the kinds of fans he attracts.
We did get lights in our eyes a bit -- but they were fortunately not blindingly bright.
BTW, I hope people will go on Lucia’s Facebook page and see her dressing room duets with Eleri. Those are fun.
Lucia's solo was a discordant modern classical piece. I like that type of music, so I enjoyed it. She is always passionate and carries out complex pieces with speed and precision. Her sound is often unique. In the Awake video, she was concert mistress, playing first chair on all the pieces. Here, no, she was only brought in as a guest soloist. Still it was nice to see her.
Despite my complaints about the sound, I was often mesmerized. I have heard so many of these songs so often. It felt like going home for a holiday visit when I was in college -- back to something reassuring, familiar -- almost a dreamy illusion that we were having a visit.
I have met some of the band members on occasion. The backup musicians are often eager to be known by fans and are quite friendly. Josh has to be more careful. Apparently, he’s had death threats of late, which has made his security tell him not to be out hobnobbing with fans. He used to.
There's something in having been a dedicated fan for so long that I feel I know him. We’ve met a few times. We used to occasionally exchange tweets, when he was still on twitter. It felt so familiar to be there. I no longer feel a desire to get to know him better. I’ve seen enough to realize that I might well not like him at all. It’s better just to listen to the music.
Still, I remember when he used to sit on twitter, not tweeting, reading fans’ tweets – and then occasionally surprise us by saying something that indicated that he had been reading. He was there with us, late at night, part of our conversations online.
One time I got a message from a moderator on his website that someone told me was actually him.
He left twitter. It’s often a negative, hostile place. I miss him there. I still sometimes send him a message, like I used to, hoping that his staff will show it to him. But I still feel like there’s some kind of connection. Maybe he would remember me if he saw me.
He’s been reaching out to fans on Instagram. He’s missing the interactions as well. I can see that.
This time he couldn’t see me. I was pretty far from the stage. He wouldn’t have known I was there. I know he used to read this blog – but I doubt that he does now – better things to do. But still I had that feeling like it was a reunion of sorts, me with someone who I called my ¾ friend, because he tweeted, I answered, and ever so occasionally he would reply back.
Now if you answer a celebrity on social media you get these creeps pretending to be the celebrity trying to talk to you. It’s like torture.
But I remember interacting with him -- and that made me feel that somehow I still was.
Generally, tho his voice is noticeably lower, I feel that Josh is sounding better after the shutdown than before. I think Adam Lambert is as well. I think their voices likely needed that rest. Josh has gotten a lot of the kinks out of his higher notes, while having much louder, richer lower notes.
He started late: 8:45. By the time he sang “You Raise Me Up” people were ready to go. I was thinking “Don’t you know he usually does an encore?”
He decided that he would sing Impossible Dream anyway, while people were still there.
It was a weird synchronicity on twitter that he asked us what musical theater song we would like him to sing. I tweeted, figuring it was to some assistant, that I didn’t know nearly so many musical theater songs as he, and wasn’t likely to be able to make a constructive suggestion. The only thing that I could think of was Impossible Dream.
He issued it as a single the next day. It felt like quick service, tho I strongly suspect it was a coincidence.
He got a standing ovation for that.
He was born to sing that song. I can’t even begin to tell you how powerful it was. It really made the concert.
My friend told me that he had been afraid to sing it. He does tend to get afraid. Maybe that fear makes him sing better. He was awesome.
He didn’t sing “To Where You Are,” my friend’s favorite. I guess he’s moving away from depressed songs. But that one is important for people who have lost loved ones. I think he should sing it.
The staff at Bethel were really wonderful & helpful – particularly for my friend who was using a walker.
The food was not good. There weren't healthy alternatives. I don't know why venues aren't upgrading their food service to be more health conscious.
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