I saw Trans Siberian Orchestra last night

[fraroc]

And they were pretty damn good. This was my third time seeing them. For the past two tours, TSO's been doing their album "The Lost Christmas Eve" live in it's entirety. This year it was different... this year, they did "The Christmas Attic" live in its entirety. The story that was being told this year was quite a bit more uplifiting than the Lost Christmas Eve story. Instead of a story about a man who's wife dies during labor and his child is born retarded which causes him to lose faith, this time it was a story about a little girl who's lost her faith in Christmas exploring her family's attic and discovering the story of two lovers that were seperated and she reunites them without either of them knowing who arranged it which recharged her faith. It really was a touching story....

 

Now down to brass tacks. The stage production I found to be both amazing and a little bit lacking at the same time...The MASSIVE 20 foot drum riser was actually a giant toy-box with a video screen which would open for the heavy metal songs and close during the narration interludes and soft ballads. Here's where I find it lacking...There was absolutley ZERO pyrotechnics during the first half of the show and the laser lights didn't show up until halfway through the first half. I feel like for both of the Lost Christmas Eve shows, there was considerably more pyro and lasers, for this tour, it was really scaled back....

 

As far as the setlist goes, the two opening songs were Time and Distance and Winter Palace going into them doing The Christmas Attic in it's entirety, the second set consisted of them doing some of their other well known songs from various albums, including Wizards In Winter from The Lost Christmas Eve, In The Hall of The Mountain King and Sparks from Night Castle, Requiem The Fifth from Beethoven's Last Night, and their famous cover of The Carol Of The Bells as the closer. My problem with the second set was, where the f**k was A Mad Russian's Christmas? Where the f**k was Dreams Of Fireflies? Those are two of TSO's most well known songs! They could have easily fit them in, just get rid of Someday (hate that f***ing boring ass song) and replace it with those two.

 

I was pretty surprised to see how many one star reviews that Trans Siberian Orchestra shows get on Ticketmaster. The people writing these reviews are in my opinion, profoundly f***ing STUPID. If only these people complaining that it was "too loud" or "too 1980s" would do a little goddamn research into what Trans Siberian Orchestra really is, It's not an "orchestra" in the conventional sense AT ALL. Trans Siberian Orchestra is a neo-classical progressive heavy metal band that plays holiday music.

 

All in all, it was a great show. I just wish that they would do the same amount of Pyro and lasers as they did in show's past and I wish they did A Mad Russian's Christmas and Dreams Of Fireflies.

[Lost In Xanadu]

I love hearing TSO thrown in here and there on the holiday stations, and I have their CDs... but I can't listen them them straight thru. I need a break here and there.