Wishing Upon A Star

It's after midnight and I am flat out exhausted. I've just gotten in from the Elton John concert.

It was wonderful.

Now, you need to understand that I started the day out tired because of the Red Sox/ Cleveland game not ending until almost midnight last night. I had to stay up and see the outcome. Fortunately it was the outcome I was looking for!

Now it's on to the most hated Yankees.

Funny, as much as I love New York, I just can’t bring myself to find one scintilla of anything to make me want to cheer for them.

This means that tomorrow night will also be a late night, as I'll have to watch that game. Or at least try to.

Back to Elton.

The subway ride in was uneventful, although I did make some notes about people watching that maybe I'll expand on at a later time. I got to the Fleet Center at about 7:15. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Boston area, the Fleet Center is the building that replaced the old Boston Garden, It’s a typical new arena, cement and concession stands. No character at all and everything is over-priced. They wanted $5.00 for a slice of pizza. Good Lord, that's what a half of a pizza should cost! The old Boston Garden had character. No air conditioning perhaps, but it had character!

I digress.

I picked up my seat at the box office, and trotted off to find the right location. Seeing I had just bought the ticket 0n-line this past weekend, I didn't expect the seat to be all that wonderful. Boy was I wrong! I was in the third row up, in the third section over, putting me about thirty rows from the stage.

I was amazed. This seems to happen if you wait to get your ticket close to the concert date. I need to remember this.

The concert started at eight o'clock sharp. How unusual! Things tend to run late at this type of event, so I was pleasantly surprised to have it start on time.

Elton emerged from the wings wearing a coral/salmon colored suit, with only a few rhinestones on the collar and lapel. The days of razzle-dazzle have passed. He had no band with him, just a grand piano. And what a piano! It was electric, so it had many features that allowed violins, percussion, almost producing the sound of a full orchestra, to back him up. He started playing immediately, and the first selection was "Your Song", which still happens to be my favorite. As far as I was concerned, the evening was already one-third a success. The only other songs I really wanted to hear were "Candle in the Wind" and either "Circle of Life" or "Can You Feel the Love Tonight".

He seemed to work in a chronological order, starting with songs from his first album, some which were not all that well known. I knew them, though, as I had pretty much worn the grooves on that album smooth. I was in tenth grade when that album was released and I played it over and over. An early obsession of sorts.

He played song after song, some familiar hits, others less familiar and not quite as enjoyable. Like most, I tend to want to hear the songs that were hits. But he did manage to get in numbers such as "Harmony", "Daniel", "Tiny Dancer", "The One", "Blue Eyes" and even "Empty Garden". When he sang "Rocket Man" they had some strange films of planets and stars that were projected on the large overhead screens, which was like instant MTV video.

He played for two hours and forty-five minutes, with no intermission. It was just amazing. He’d play a big number and I’d think," o.k. now it’s intermission", but it never happened.

He tended to take off with piano solos during the songs, and it was obvious that he was having a great time playing these improvisations and riffs. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that he’s a wonderful pianist as you tend to think of him as a pop artist. He seemed to really like honky-tonk kinds of rhythms, as he’d start inserting them all over the place. His other favorite seemed to be boogie-woogie.

He came back to do "Circle of Life as an encore. There were scenes from the movie projected on the screen, and his playing was perfectly timed to the film. The film was a montage that went from the beginning when Rafiki presents Simba to the animals, to the ending where Simba, Nala, Pumba and Timon are standing on that same precipice.

I cried.

He also did "Bennie and the Jets" as an encore, which I think might have been the most fun. He’d had the audience chiming in on "Crocodile Rock", and had everyone dancing and singing during "Bennie". It amazed me that all he had to do was play the first chord of the song, and then stop to have the audience go crazy. Of course any true Elton fan recognizes that first chord of Bennie immediately. In the middle of that song, he switched to playing "In the Mood’, then back to "Bennie". It was just great.

His final encore was "Candle in the Wind". I love that song, although it does make me think if Princess Diana.

It was a swell night. Elton’s last words were, "Boston. Whip those Yankees asses!"

Fine by me!

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