Elton John Madison Square Garden 12/3/13

Elton John, Madison Square Garden, 12/3/13

People have been telling me to see Elton John for a very long time. I waited too long. Unfortunately, his voice is failing. It's tremulous and he doesn't hold a pitch well. It was hard for me to recognize songs, not that I know all of them, but I did start recognizing some after a while.  -- Of course I haven't heard him sing often, so it might be that he's always sounded like that.

Still, most people seemed to love this concert. It was packed. Everyone was dancing around and cheering. The people with the pricey seats went up by the stage and sang along with great enthusiasm. When I finally remembered to pull out my binoculars, I was slightly surprised to see so many men up there by the stage bopping and singing, but then I'm used to Josh Groban concerts. Why anyone would prefer this concert to Josh Groban was an utter mystery to me, but then that's my life story. Other people have often been a mystery to me.

So, being uncertain that I even liked this performer, I purchased a cheap seat in the balcony. The primary attraction of this seat having been that it was on an aisle. That turned out to be even better than I could have hoped, because it turned out to be the aisle with the women's restroom. The coolest thing about Madison Square Garden, from my perspective, is that they let you go to the bathroom during the show with no restriction. I ended up going three times. This was partly because I could, and partly because the concert was three hours long with no intermission.

Now that included a short opening act by two very vigorous cellists. These were young men from Eastern Europe. I think Elton said one was from Croatia and the other from Russia. Elton also pointed out later that they were very cute. That's an endearing thing about Elton, that he's an openly gay man and he can say stuff like that. He also pointed out that most of the band members were much older, so it was good to have some young, cute guys.

Elton and his band were all white men. The only females up there were the backup singers, who were black women. He later pointed out that one of them was featured in the movie "20 Feet from Stardom," which I saw, because it also featured Judith Hill, who I've blogged about before, both because she's connected in my mind with my Michael Jackson inspired quixotic quest for the world anthem, and also because she toured with Josh Groban.  It was notable that Elton introduced ALL four of his backup singers, which Josh does not, and this movie “20 Feet from Stardom” made a point of the fact that these black backup singers have been largely anonymous, despite the fact that their vocals really made a lot of these famous songs successful. A lot of times, people sing along with the backup vocals rather than with the main lyrics.

The diversity problems in acts of touring musicians do Not seem to be confined to Josh, who also recently toured with an all male touring band, though he picked up female performers from local orchestras.

The whole music industry is horrifically male dominated. If you look closely at the jackets of physical CDs, you'll see that virtually everyone backstage is male.  Based in Josh's photos from recording, it appears that theses backstage folks are all white makes, too, though Josh at least made a point of having racially diverse backup musicians.  Even Judith Hill's touring band was all male, though in her case there was no diversity, as they were all black – making hers a segregated act.  With the advent of electronic downloads, they're not even telling us who’s back stage all the time, so they're increasingly able to hide what's going on, but it's a constant irritant to me.

Still a lot of these guys have been with Elton all along, so that's some excuse.

Anyway, the cellists were cute. Also they endeared themselves to me, by starting with Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal."  Since Michael Jackson was the first Pop musician I discovered in 2009, when I broke out of cultural isolation, and since he was the inspiration for my quixotic quest for the world anthem, I always like to see people picking up his stuff. It's interesting to me that each musician picks up a different one of his songs. Josh Groban sang "She's out of My Life. "  Charice sang "Earth Song." Connie Talbot sang "Ben" and "Heal the World." Those are people I follow. Judith Hill sang some of his songs also, like "Man in the Mirror," but it's obviously really distressing to her to sing his stuff, because she's still traumatized by his death, so she tries to avoid it.  . 

OK, I'm off topic.

It was really loud in the balcony. I wore earplugs the whole time.  No one else seemed to mind. Everyone else probably already damaged their hearing, I suppose.

Another thing that happened in the balcony was that when people started dancing the balcony started shaking in time with the music. Since I was a physics major, and studied mechanical resonance, I'm always mindful of the dangers of synchronized, rhythmic movement of large crowds. I was very nervous. I can only hope that the engineers who designed that balcony anticipated that large numbers of people would be dancing in it, and not just watching hockey. In any case, it did not collapse, so that was a relief.

Now, Elton started out with some songs that I didn't recognize at all, except for "Candle in the Wind," which don't sound at all the way it sounded at Princess Diana's funeral, which was disappointing to me, since that’s where I remembered it from. I'm guessing that some of these songs were off a more recent album. For me this was really unpleasant. He didn't sing that well. The style of the music was loud and banging, and I didn't even recognize the stuff. I almost left before nine.

Ultimately, I was glad that I didn't leave, as the concert got better as we went along.

First, he got into some quieter, more melodic ballads. I really liked those better. Unfortunately, my post surgery exhaustion kicked in. I had major surgery two weeks before and was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer, and am expecting to start chemo in two weeks. So I dozed off during part of that, but I needed the nap. I had been running around all day and was awoken early (for me) by a phone call -- not very good post surgery behavior.

Anyway, then I started recognizing some of the pieces. That really helped pick things up for me.  The first one I recognized was "Philadelphia Freedom." Then I started recognizing a whole bunch, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," "Rocket Man," "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," and "Saturday Night's Alright." (maybe that’s not the title)  As encores, he did "Your Song" and "Crocodile Rock."  The last one was the best for me, because I always liked that song.

He was certainly high energy.  His whole outfit was covered in blue sequins, with blue shoes, which was catchy. For a lot of the show, I forgot to take out my binoculars, because I was looking at the screen that they provided, but really the binoculars are more fun in a way, because you get to choose what you are looking at, so I had fun with them when I remembered them. Elton did frequently remember that there were people behind him, like me, and stood up and faced us when he was done with songs.

That's one thing I've noticed about older, experienced performers. They're much more conscious of the audience and make a bigger point of looking out and smiling and making eye contact, while the younger performers tend to be more absorbed in the music.  I noticed that about Neil Diamond.  He had much more stage presence at 70 than at 30, which partly made up for not having as good of a voice.

There was a fascinating, huge chandelier, which assumed various different positions, colors, and moving color patterns. I'm so frustrated that my cell phone camera is so bad at capturing the colors of colored lights.

Anyway, I did enjoy the concert more at the end, but I'm probably not going back to see this performer, and will stick with classical pop crossover, which I like better.

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photos

There was one drummer, who Elton said had been with him from the start, who really caught my eye, because he looked so very dignified, more like the type of person you would expect to see in a bank.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get his photo, because he was on the large screen for such short intervals.  By the time I clicked they would always be back to Elton John

Oh wait, here's Sulic & Hauser doing "Smooth Criminal" on YouTube, just like they did it during the concert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx0xCI1jaUM Except that they used electric cellos during the concert.

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OK, I'm going back and watching Elton John videos on YouTube that were originally from the 70's, especially the songs that I recognized from this concert.  I don't much care for those either, so probably he's just not my cup of tea.  It seems that the melodies are just very weak in the first place.