The Abduction

My aunt and uncle took us to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra this evening.  They were performing The Christmas Attic.

you will be assimilated

I was pretty excited about it, but unfortunately ended up a bit less-than-impressed.  The musicians themselves were incredibly talented, and I enjoyed the hell out of it every time they were doing an instrumental arrangement.  The laser and pyrotechnic effects, too, were super freaking awesome, and I enjoyed the hell out of that, too.  And it's always fun to go do things with people who are passionate about those things- and TSO has an exceptionally passionate following, which meant the energy was really great.

So those were the good things.

The bad things were  more or less threefold: one, the music was too loud (if I have my ears physically plugged and the music is still too loud, your music is too fucking loud) and not properly balanced (the guitars almost totally drowned out the orchestra, which was particularly disappointing to this cello-lover); two, the animations were distractingly bad (very 90s-era CGI); three, these guys are in desperate need of a competent lyricist.  Every time there was narration, or an 'original' song was played, Nathan and I just gaped at one another over the terribleness of the lyrics.  At one point Nathan whispered, "Why do they keep using the word candle?" and I responded, "Say candle one more time!" and we dissolved into fits of giggles.  I also started mentally replacing the word "Christmas" with "Murder", which added interest back to the proceedings.  ("On this most holy murder eve, the spirit of murder speaks to us all here in the darkness of the murder attic...)

Nathan later pointed out that if only it had been in another language, one we didn't understand, we might have enjoyed it more, and I agree.  Because like I said- the music itself, and the overall performance were just fabulous... but not quite enough to make up for the rest of it.

On the bright side, I did get a fabulous idea for a creepy short story out of it, so maybe that will get posted later...