From boston@hevanet.com Sun Oct 6 10:46:45 1996 Date: Sun, 6 Oct 96 10:45 PDT To: wesley.chun@Eng From: Todd Subject: AP concert Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 6036 Hi, Wesley! :) W O W! What a concert!!!!! I wish I could go to more than one! Everyone is right; this is by far the _best_ concert I've ever seen! We showed up at the Roseland Theater about 6:45pm, and the doors didn't open until 8. We found the rest of the party camped out already, right by the doors! From where we were, we could hear the band practicing; it was almost like getting two shows for the price of one! :) (BTW, someone found out from the Roseland Theater workers that chairs were being set up-- normally, there's a dance floor-- because, judging by the music and the age of the audience, they figured that no one would be dancing!) Eventually, the doors opened and we were allowed in; they checked IDs, since there were bars opened on both floors. So we showed our IDs, got the tickets ripped and ran for the front row , right by the stage! We were all able to get front row seats, except for Rosemary, who is not "of age"; she was unfortunately relegated to the back in some roped off "under age" section! I thought that was unfair; families with children not 21 were stuck in the back! While the time flew by outdoors, it creeped slowly forward once we took our seats. But at 9pm, the show began! And it was fantastic!!!!! I checked the spoiler info before we left, and they stuck right to the playlist. I took pictures (since they didn't check for anything-- I wish I'd brought my video camera!); unfortunately, the pictures didn't turn out (I needed a tripod to keep it steady). The band was right on form! Ian's solos were incredible! And the singers _never_ missed a note! They had every song absolutely perfect; I would have had a tough time picking out the difference between Chris Rainbow singing "Days are Numbers (The Traveller)" and Peter Beckett's version. (Peter got a standing ovation for it, to which he replied, "Thank you very much! How are you guys doing? Nice meeting you!" He sounds Australian.) At the risk of repeating the spoiler info, here are the notes I took at the show: 9:00 pm (The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether-- Neil Can't Take It with You-- Peter I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You-- Neil Old and Wise-- Peter Money Talks/ La Sagrada Familia-- Neil Days Are Numbers (The Traveller)-- Peter Prime Time-- Neil [Ian's solo is spectacular!] Limelight-- Neil Time-- Peter Turn It Up-- Neil [Peter was enjoying a Heineken and cigarette on the sidelines] Standing on Higher Ground-- Neil 9:55 pm INTERMISSION: "I have some rather disturbing news," said Alan, "we're going to take a break." 10:05pm Blue Blue Sky II-- Neil [only Neil and Ian appeared on the stage for this one] Can't Look Down-- Neil [the rest of the band joined in on this one] So Far Away-- Peter Fall Free-- Neil [Alan mentions before the song starts that this song was picked up by ESPN for their Extreme Games, since it was written for one of the particpants, Rob Harris] Cloudbreak Brother Up in Heaven-- Neil [Ian introduces the song: "We've got a bit of chaos up here, but we're making it. Can I just say that the energy coming off you guys is fantastic!" He then talks about his cousin killed in the Gulf War, and how devastating it was to his family. John Giblin plays an electric cello with a bow.] Sirius/ Eye in the Sky-- Peter [Alan introduces this one with, "Gonna continue with something a little more familiar; does anyone llike basketball out there?"] FIRST ENCORE Don't Answer Me-- Peter and Neil share the stage: Peter sings the first verse, Neil, the second. You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned-- Neil SECOND ENCORE Games People Play-- Neil and Peter share the stage again After 10 years of waiting for an Alan Parsons concert, I have to say I was _not_ disappointed. The show was excellent; I only wished we'd have been able to meet the band! (Though we did get to shake hands with most members, including Alan and Ian as they left the stage) Security hustled everyone out that wasn't wearing a backstage pass, and this particular venue was in an area we didn't feel too comfortable in. Another thing that surprised us was the audience. When we met the APP list people (Jim and Arehn, Peter, and Rosemary), there was sort of a kinship there; we were all waiting to see our favorite band! But the rest of the audience reminded Todd of the bar scene from The Blues Brothers ("We have both kinds of music-- country _and_ western!") Most of the audience looked like they'd feel right at home at a Grateful Dead concert; many of the people seemed drunk even before the concert started, shouting out to the roadies "Hey, Alan, nice legs!" The guy next to Todd started smoking a joint (remember-- they didn't check for _anything_). But they did get involved in the concert, hooting and hollering (I wish they hadn't while Ian was talking about Eric, in his intro to "Brother Up in Heaven"), and were very appreciative, so it all worked out for the best. I just hope that that venue doesn't put them off of touring in Oregon again! :) Well, have lots of fun with your concerts! I am jealous that you get to see more than one! Enjoy it! Elise +======================================================================+ | Todd Pettijohn <*> | email: boston@hevanet.com | | Information Systems | webpage: currently down | | Stimson Lumber Company | irc: nickname cribbage | | P.O. Box 68 | #cribbage on any undernet server | | Forest Grove, OR 97116 | #boston_party on any dalnet server | +======================================================================+ From soob@teleport.com Mon Oct 7 12:07:34 1996 Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 11:41:15 -0700 (PDT) From: Jim McCarty To: Alan Parsons List Subject: Portland Concert - BackStage Experience Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Length: 8301 Howdy! Wow! What a show! The show was held at the Roseland Theater in downtown Portland. The venue holds about 1100 people and I was actually surprised/pleased to find that they had set chairs up on the main floor (they usually leave that open for standing). I think the capacity they state on their web page is for when there aren't chairs in the middle. Anyway, Arehn and I got there about 6 PM since the doors open at 8 and the show was now general admission. Peter Auseklis was already there (we were the first ones) and we listened to the band run through sound check while we got acquainted; I heard them playing Psychobabble and wondered if that was going to be added. Not too long after, we were joined by Rosemary and her father, Mike. Soon after that, Todd and Elise showed up. It was nice to get to meet everybody. Finally, the doors opened and we all rushed in to get good positions (didn't really know if they were gonna have chairs on the floor, yet). We all got front row, spanning across the center. After a bit Dan Olson and his friend, Tammy showed up and we were able to hold two seats for them. This was actually serendipitous... we were holding the seats for Rosemary and her father (thinking they could sneak up after the show started) since they were forced to sit way in the back =D4cause Rosemary was underage and they were serving alcohol on the floor. I couldn't believe it! She had been waiting for 7 years to see them and she had great seats in the original venue and they didn't even let her know that she'd be restricted to the far corner in the new theater. Well, Arehn and I went searching for the manager to see if there was anyway she could get backstage after the show. Arehn found him and explained the situation and he said he thought he could swing it. So after that, we were all able to enjoy the show. It was the same set list as the Denver concert. I really enjoyed Peter Beckett's performance (great stage presence), it looked like he was really getting into it. Ian was just awesome! And having front row center seats, it was like they were playing right to us! Alan was positioned rear center stage, keyboards were stage left with drums and bass stage right (Ian was just a little stage left). The entire time, Arehn, Dan and I were singing along with every song and Alan noticed and was motioning to us at one point, I was pretty sure Ian, Peter and Neil noticed as well. The final encore song was rockin', Neil even played 12-string. After the show, we met up with Peter and Rosemary and waited to get backstage and meet Alan and the band, boy was I nervous! We finally got to go down and we waited for a few minutes for them to join us. Alan came in first and was talking with the first few people in the room and signing autographs, Arehn and I stayed in the back to give him some room and time to talk with others (we didn't want to mod him). After talking to a couple of people, he looked up and saw Arehn and myself across the room, in the back. He smiled and said "I remember you, you were sitting in the front row singing the words to every song." As he was saying this, he was walking through the crowd to come and talk to us. It was just like a dream! We talked for a while (he was really easy to talk with) and I'm really glad Arehn was there to add some intelligence to our end of the conversation. He was surprised we even knew the words to the new songs. He said he enjoyed that and the energy it added. He mentioned that there were three of us sitting together and wanted to know where the third one was, that would be you Dan. He wanted me to go up and bring you down, too. He asked us how we liked the show, how the length was (I said I could've listened all night). At this point, he mentioned that they were going to add Psychobabble to the show but didn't feel they were quite ready with it yet. Look for it in a future show! He also asked how we enjoyed the new album. I told him it was great and that it would be nice if there was better advertising for it (since there virtually wasn't any) and especially since it comes with the free CD-ROM. He was pleased I enjoyed the ROM and we talked about it for a few minutes. The missing archives are a bug he was sad to say, and he also gave me a hint for the CD that I'll pass along later if nobody finds it (actually, I'll probably give it to Steve to put in the next Avenue). By this time, Ian had come out as well. Stuart, Peter and Neil also came out a little later, but I didn't see Gary (didn't realize he'd look so young) or John (I wanted to tell John how much Arehn and I enjoyed his contribution). We got to talk with Peter a bit and he did notice us singing along with them (as did Ian, Neil and (surprise to me Stuart!). He says he really enjoys touring with the band and is looking forward to doing more with them. Stuart was surprised to learn that I really like Take The Money And Run, I told him it was my favorite of the studio tracks on the live disc. He was fun to talk with. We finally got to talk with Ian. He seemed kind of shy at the beginning, but really warmed up and we had a fabulous conversation (again I was glad Arehn was there to add some intelligence for our side). We talked a bit about his song writing. Arehn really likes Turn It Up and he told us how he wrote it. He was lying in bed trying to get to sleep and the first couple of lines came to him and he thought "I'll have to remember that," then a bit later, he thought of the fence lines and thought it was so funny that he got up to write them all down. Well, he wrote the entire song at that point and really didn't have to change anything, it all just flowed out. Ian gets a kick out of Can't Look Down, he told us what the original name of the song was and I can't remember it now. Too Far Away was originally Rio, written after the Rio conference where world big-wigs got together to talk about world issues (global warming, that sort of thing) and then went away and did nothing about it. We also talked about the CD-ROM. Ian mentioned that they were trying to make the music and the ROM part of the same disc. They only had about 90MB to work with and then they thought, "Why are we doing this? We should make a separate CD-ROM...." The nice part of having the separate disc, they thought, is that if they provide the disc free, they won't have to worry about supporting it. Where with the hybrid disc, if it didn't work, somebody could return it after playing around with it and listening to the music side. During development, they were pushing the 650MB mark, after paring down the content and compressing the video, they got it down to where it is now. Ian mentioned that the opening scene with the balloons was originally just supposed to have only 11 balloons take you somewhere, but somebody with Macromedia experience botched it up by linking more balloons. Storm isn't very happy about that. Ian has never been in a balloon or a helicopter, two things he wants to do and he thought his first helicopter ride would be with his cousin. He said that when his cousin got out of the service, he was thinking of being a professional helicopter pilot. So far, the band thought the Portland show had been their best, they loved the energy of the crowd. Oh, Alan also mentioned the new surround disc during the concert. He said it would be out in a couple of months, and it will sound great with the new system. There will be 6 channels with the surround sound (obviously, we'll need new equipment) and Alan says they're making systems for cars, too! Ian mentioned that after the tour, he will be getting an e-mail address and will post it when that happens. It was an Awesome experience! I sincerely hope Alan continues to produce and engineer more AP music and continue touring. I'd hate for it to end. Jim ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim McCarty | If I seek in every corner, All around good guy | If I search in every doorway, and Alan Parsons Fan | When the water turns to wine soob@teleport.com | will I believe? jimmcc@pogo.wv.tek.com | - Alan Parsons (Bairnson & Musker) ----------------------------------------------------------------------