Live!

My love of musicals is well known – and now well documented.  Know what else I love?  Concerts.  I love going to concerts.  It’s the closest thing I’ll ever get to a religious experience, right?

My tastes are diverse but generally pretty mainstream and all the shows I’ve seen this year have been pretty special – whether evoking a mood, memory or much needed visceral release of everything inside me as I got lost in that big sound.  This year, Sarah, Adele and Idina made me cry (take that, Julie!), RUSH, in Hamilton, no less, was quintessential Canadiana, a moonlit summer night was made all the more perfect with Stars, I had a full on GLEE karaoke party, Donny & Marie and Barry Manilow brought the kitsch and U2 was, simply, U2.  Last night, Jay-Z (or Jay Zed as my American pal likes to call him) and Kanye West continued a concert streak of greatness, proving that no matter how high your dork quotient, anyone can look cool rhythmically bouncing to rap.  

Kanye, with this his leather kilt and distracting diamond grill and low key Jay-Z are rap impresarios, full of the ego and swagger you would expect from rap impresarios. Rap is anything but subtle. It’s hard driving beats with insane lyrics - offensive, misogynistic, explicit.  Whatever.  Who cares.  It sounds amazing when done well and these dudes  killed it last night.  That shit crazy.  A two and a half hour marathon of never ending boom.  Where they find the time to record, let alone tour – what, with swiping Grammy’s from Taylor Swift (again, who cares, award shows need more cage-match drama) and cavorting around the globe with Beyonce – is beyond me.  Good on them for doing it and not phoning it in (hello, Coldplay, ripping us off with a 45 minute concert last year!). 

When you have thousands of people bouncing to the beat of the same drummer you really feel like you’re stuck in time.  Stuck in a moment where nothing else matters but the next song you’re about to hear, the next scream you’re going to wail.  Who wouldn’t want to do this all time? Come on people!  Above all this, is the connections you make from show to show – common threads or memories that make the nights more special - get this one:  last week, Idina Menzel had me crying with her acoustic version of “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” and last night, Jay-Z had me grooving to ‘Hard Knock Life”. That’s right, yo, both from Annie. The first musical I ever saw. The watershed evening that propelled my love of musicals and my love of live.  How’s that for monumentally awesome?     

So, the throne, it’s been watched.  And Jay-Z and Kanye will now pass the torch to Prince who takes the stage at the ACC for two sold out shows this coming weekend.  The man’s a legend.  An uber talented, peculiar little legend.  I cannot fucking wait.