I went to the Faith Hill-Tim McGraw concert the other night at the Verizon Center in DC. Boomers who are country music fans probably know that one of Faith’s early hits (in 1994) was a remake of Janis Joplin’s 1968 hit “Piece Of My Heart.” At the time she recorded the song, Faith had never heard the original, and she did it as an up tempo kick-ass country song.
Both versions are great, but my preference leans slightly toward the original slower tempo blues-rock one. I was pleasantly surprised – shocked, actually - to hear Faith sing the song that way during the concert. Slow and bluesie. However, she did not attempt to reach that soaring high note like in the Janis version.
The concert was good, by the way, but at times I thought the elaborate staging overwhelmed the performance. I saw both Tim and Faith in their early years, in a smaller venue with less stage pretension, and thought those shows were more appealing.
The biggest and most amusing surprise that night wasn’t musical, however. At one point, as Tim walked out on one of the stage ramps to get closer to the audience, I noticed something I had never seen at a concert before … several HUNDRED cell phone screens glowing in the dark. Camera phones, to be more precise. “Oh look, he’s coming over here. Let’s get a picture!” This probably happens all the time, but that is the first time I observed this phenomenon.
Back when I was listening to Janis sing “Piece Of My Heart” I could not have even imagined that one day I could take a telephone out of my pocket and snap a photo with it.
A Little Ditty
3 weeks ago
2 comments:
When I saw The New Cars/Blondie earlier this year, the first concert to which I'd been in probably seven years, I was ASTONISHED at the number of people who not only had cell phones, but were yammering on them throughout the entire show. I mean, come on people - you PAID for your ticket (unless you won them like I did), you ought to at least PRETEND you're listening to the music!
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Yep! But even if they didn't pay for the tickets, most of the 20,000 people who were there DID pay! As much as $100 legally or more from scalpers. My tickets were free, but I still went out of my way to see the concert because I wanted to actually SEE and HEAR the concert. The good news is that most of these cellphone users were photographing and not talking.
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