Good Afternoon, Sweet Baby,
I am checking in from Pearl's, just to say hi, cause I'll be leaving for the Opeth concert directly from here at 6:30. It's gonna be a Mega Show, a 25th Anniversary concert where they will play the entire "Ghost Reveries" album, and then come back for a second full set. I imagine it will be about 2 1/2 hours of music, so I am gonna need to drink a strong cup of tea before I go, haha.
The concert will be at The Orpheum, in Downtown's Theater District, so it's another old movie theater from the 1920s, and I have been there several times before. It's an easy trip on the subway and a short walk from the Pershing Square station. Just a couple blocks from where I saw Alcest, actually.
If they start on time at 8pm, or thereabouts, the show should be over by 11pm and I should be back to Pearl's by Midnight or 12:30am at the latest, and I will write more then.
I hope you are enjoying your early evening! I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
12:50am : Happy Super Late Night, my Darling. Well, that was quite a show. I had a bit of an ordeal getting down there; got stuck in a horrific traffic jam on the 101 freeway - which I never take to get to the North Hollywood subway station, I always take surface streets - but this time I was dumb enough to get on the freeway, and the traffic was dead stopped. I would normally have been at the NoHo station by 7pm, had I taken my normal route, but I wound up getting there at 7:20, and the train didn't leave until 7:27. Yes, I was counting every minute by that point, because I knew that it takes between 25 and 30 minutes to get to the Pershing Square station Downtown. That meant I was gonna get there between 7:52 and 7:57. The show was scheduled to start at 8pm. Usually, at most concerts there is a little bit of leeway, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, but I was guessing this one was gonna start on time, because it was gonna be three hours long.
So I was looking at my phone the whole way down there on the train. Eleven stations between NoHo & Pershing. Me, when the train stopped at a station, checking for oncoming passengers. "Go, go, go"! Close the doors, get the doggone train going! I was stressin'......
I am one of those people who is a stickler about certain things. I won't go into a movie if it's already started. A concert is a little different, because a ticket costs a lot of money and you buy it months in advance, and a band only tours still so often. So even if you miss a song or two, you've still gotta go in. But to me, if I miss a song, even if I get to see 90% of a two hour show, the concert feels besmirched. That's how sacred it is to me. You don't miss a moment of a concert. All these people nowdays, running out to the lobby to get beers every few songs, like it was a baseball game......(some fans, eh?).
So I was sweating it out on the subway, mentally kicking myself for having gotten on the freeway to begin with. It cost me 20 minutes. But I am a good time manager and time estimator, and as I counted down the remaining stations I calculated that we'd arrive at Pershing at 7:52, and I was right on the money. Two more minutes to exit the station, walking very fast.
Then at 7:54, with a three quarter mile walk to The Orpheum, I jog-walked the five long blocks. Knowing from my nightly walks that 3/4 mile takes 11 minutes, I hoped to shave maybe two or three minutes off by hustling. In my head, I projected a thought : "C'mon Mike, just wait til 8:10. Or even 8:08".
I was making good time on the Downtown sidewalk, going down Broadway, which still has buildings standing from the 1880s. The Orpheum is at Broadway and 9th Street.
On the way down, I had sent out a silent prayer. Stuck in the traffic jam, and kicking myself for having gotten on the freeway, I thought, "Please, just let me get to the concert before the first note starts". Even missing part of the first song just kills me, and it's only happened maybe five times in 41 years of concertgoing.
So that was my prayer: "Please let me get there before the first note".
I walked up to the ticket taker at the door of The Orpheum theater at 8:03pm. (Please, Mike, just give me til 8:05!). He scanned my ticket, and just as I entered the lobby, I heard the cheering of the audience, followed immediately by the unmistakeable, abrupt drum & guitar intro to "Ghost Of Perdition", the beyond-heavy opening song on the "Ghost Reveries" album, which they were gonna play all the way through. I got to my seat less than a minute later.
So my prayer worked. I did not miss the first note of the concert, even though I wasn't actually in my seat when it was played. But I was inside the theater. I'd made it!
And it was an incredible show. Opeth is at the highest level of musicianship and dynamics, with state-of-the-art live sound, and the "Ghost Reveries" live set was alone worth the price of admission, a concert in itself. It is just something that leaves you speechless.
This was my sixth Opeth concert, starting in 2011. It was by far the longest, 3 hours 10 minutes, including a 20 minute intermission and perhaps 15 minutes overall of Mikael's storytelling and joking around, which he is known for. So, the music totaled over 2 1/2 hours.
Opeth are at the top of the heap as a live act. Their music is very complex and not easily digestible, I think they are a band people either like or don't, there probably isn't a lot of middle ground lukewarm fandom with them. But man, oh man, if you're a fan, do they deliver.
What an amazing show. I am so glad I didn't miss a note!
I hope you had a good day and a nice evening. Tomorrow is church & choir (and in fact I'd better get to sleep!), and so usual schedule for the morning.
I'll be back at about 1pm tomorrow. Sweet Dreams until then. I Love You!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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