Sunday, April 10, 2011

MSG Times Three

My friends constantly get concert emails from me, whether or not they know or like the band. The truth is, I love concerts (more than broadway, more than cocktails, and more than soup dumplings) and NYC is the best place for it.

I may have gone a little overboard this year (likely due to lack of concerts for the past two years). It’s only April and I’ve already gone to Madison Square Garden (MSG) three times and one jazz concert. The summer is also going to bring a bunch of outdoor concerts with new acts. Can’t wait!

  1. Prince: When he’s on stage (the stage is shaped like the symbol), you just know the man is a legend. The crowd knew every single song and never stopped dancing. I even got J. to loosen up a little bit near the end. Purple Rain was beautiful and moving. His free flowing guitar jams are something that you need to experience in person because they don’t tend to put those in the albums. I really don’t expect anyone to top this, ever.
  2. Strokes: If I had to pick a soundtrack for NYC, I would put Strokes albums on random and repeat all. I actually bought the ticket for this concert 2 or 3 hours on stubhub before the event. I didn’t want to miss them for the world. For a band that comes from NYC and haven’t had a group album in a while, the anticipation was extremely high. I met quite a number of nice fans in my section as well as waiting in the beer line. I thought they did a great job with the large screens (all black and white, focused on the band/singer/instruments). The lead singer dived off the stage a few times and the fans loved every bit of him. The album sound really can’t compare with the live sound. You just hear the guitars/bass/drums a lot more.
  3. Juanes:  I managed to drag V. to this concert. I’m sure he’s the only person who actually knows this amazing artist from Columbia. I first found out about Juanes back in Spanish class in college. Our professor played a couple of his songs to teach us a specific grammar concept. Anyways, I saw him on a ticket alert email and decided to try out the concert. He has an incredibly voice in concert, which wasn’t as obvious on the albums. Not sure if he planned those really colorful backgrounds on the big screens in MSG or they were trying to make up for the small posse. This crowd was energetic and the dancing didn’t stop from the first song to the last encore. Glad I got to check him out and happy to note that my Spanish skills has improved greatly in the past few weeks as I listened to his songs and Spanish radio.

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