Good times, good times
SD and I went to see Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo with the symphony tonight. Excellent, excellent show.
Pat's voice and presence, even after so many years, is just so awesome, hard to believe that she is 53 ... and we were close enough to see all her facial expressions as she delivered each song with a ton of vocal power, grace, and emotion. I didn't remember it too much from the past, but man, Neil can really lay down some riffs and solos.
Why have a symphony show when the symphony totally drowned out in the mix? I don't think there's a really good answer for this. The show was very good despite this obvious flaw.
Pat remarked that this was the most well behaved crowd they ever performed for. There were only a handful of people treating it like a rock concert and getting up and yelling and shouting ... one was SD LOL. The ushers and peer pressure were keeping butts in the seats, and that was unfortunate because this was one heck of an energetic show ... too bad more people weren't into it
I felt really bad for some of the old timer symphony types, they were really in for a very big surprise, a very loud mostly hard rocking show -- the lady next to me had her fingers in her ears for half the show. I looked around during the show, and saw a ton of discomfort among the older members of the audience
Symphony opened with songs from movies and TV:
- Superman (suite of music from 1978 movie, incl. main theme and love theme)
- Music from Looney Tunes and Bugs Bunny and Friends (very fun)
- Songs from Nat King Cole
- Themes from late 60s-early 70s TV shows and cartoons ... Hawaii 5-0 really stole the show, but the passages from Star Trek and I Dream of Jeannie both sounded great
Setlist
All Fired Up
Wide Awake In Dreamland
Invincible
We Live for Love (acoustic)
True Love
We Belong
Hell is for Children
Heartbreaker
Promises in the Dark
Love is a Battlefield
note: At the end of 'Promises', Neil went over to confer with Matt C. the conductor, came back and said they planned too many songs. Pat said that that they may have to play all night. So they cut a song or two, in all probability. Guesses are it was Hit Me With Your Best Shot or possibly Shadows of the Night, maybe both.