In the area of best-laid plans going awry, my dear wife wanted to get the one night a year she gets away from work and taking care of her invalid mother and go to a concert that drifted into the boondocks. She bought the tickets..probably cheap at $15 each.. and also for a good cause...buying new lifeline units for the local hospital and the at-home and at-risk..of the " help, I've fallen and can't reach my lawyer"kind.
My Wife works at the hospital, so this was a good way to sort of combine business and pleaure.
Anyway....Because of some fluke of accidents, surgery, etc. the local home health nurses were unable to come when called at Noon and then were unable to assist my wife until about 8:30 in the evening. This as it turned out was about 3/4 of the way through the program, so her $15 ticket still is on the table. I went...as the family emissary..
The group Was the South Dakota Acoustical Group ... a very talented bunch. But the concert was in the high school/national Guard Auditorium/armory. This may be a good place to play basketball, but it is a downright crappy place for music of anykind. And sitting on wood bleachers takes most of the joy out of watching anything there.
And then to turn it into something close to real torture, they were blasting their acoustic instruments through speakers with volume somewhere near that of a major jet taking off. I could only stand to listen to them or hear the distinct instuments and voices if I firmly planted a finger in each ear. The soundman running their board must be deaf as a knotted post. If this had been in a bar, you could have sat in your car in a parking lot with the windows rolled up and heard everything.
I am no music critic, so you can take the rest of this with a huge grain of salt if you know better. They played a real mixture of stuff...gospels, rock and roll, old big band vocals, etc. With 10 of them there and guest piano player Jeremy Hegg (doubling on trumpet) , and most of the rest also being able to play multiple instruments, a few of their arrangements would have made Spike Jones proud. That is actually a compliment in this situation. These are good and versatile musicians.
After they got through with their eclectic mixture (somewhat ranging from "Ave Maria" to "The Dummy Song"), I decided to get one of their CDs for my wife since she had missed the program. We have
played "I Still Feel the Same" album several times. It is a lot easier to listen to and much more enjoyable when the volume is turned down to a tolerable level. As I said, I am not a music critic, but all their arrangements seem just a bit "fast" to me. Some music isn't made for racing through and they seem to have their music accelerator pedal on the floor nearly all the time. "Frenetic' might be an appropriate adjective. Of course others may call that "lively and energetic". YMMV of course.
Anyway, click on their site and see if you can buy a CD or two. While you are at it hit their "contact" option and suggest they update their site. You would be helping keep some culture here in the boondocks, and you might enjoy their music. They have a variety of CD's available since they have been at this for a decade or so. Hegg apparently has his own group called "SpoonCat". Buying a CD also helps a good group doing the packaging and distribution apparently. Kill several "birds" with one well-placed credit card charge.
I am sure that if this burg actually had a place with good acoustic for good music, all the school music programs and anything like this concert would have been and be much more enjoyable for both listeners and performers.
There is talk of an "events" center for Winner, SD, but knowing how this place works the events they probably have in mind are bigger wrestling tournaments or billiards tournaments and conditions for good music is somewhere beneath the 50th point on their excuses for dumping some more tax money to duplicate some existing screwup or make another mess of a project while they pat themselves on the back for several years...as local powers sell a little more concrete too..just to make the circle jerk complete.
**Stay tuned even if singing in the rain is not your idea of a good evening---Doug Wiken
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