Birdie's First Concert: Laurie Berkner Live!
You may recall that my daughter went through an intense phase of loving Laurie Berkner's music. Since that post, her general preference for Berkner's music has continued. Birdie's favorite song has shifted from Moon to Rocketship Run, and she's slightly less obsessive about requesting Berkner's music in the car, but she's still a fan. Which is how how Birdie, M, M's mother and I ended up in the Hudson High School auditorium on the morning of Saturday, August 5 to see Laurie Berkner perform an hour set of her hits.
The concert was a free performance put on by the Hudson Library, which thankfully was moved from the (quite hot) lawn of the Hudson library to the (air conditioned) high school auditorium. Although it was free, it did require preregistration to reserve a spot, so I woke up early on July 5 so I could be at my keyboard at 7am sharp to sign us up. It's a good thing I was, because at 7:05am the website reported that every spot had been claimed. As we would find out, the Hudson High School auditorium comfortably seats a few hundred people; Laurie Berkner is a big deal.
Berkner had recently broken her foot and was wearing a soft cast, which limited her mobility. She apologized for not running around and jumping as much as she apparently normally does, but her back up singer / dancer / hype woman Melissa made up for it - it looked like a pretty substantial workout.
It's unclear to me if that was because there were hundreds of excited small children or because they didn't hire a real sound person or because my middle-aged ears are failing out on me, but neither M nor I could really hear what Berkner was saying when she wasn't singing. I could hear the songs just fine from our seats, but most of her banter couldn't be heard even with her microphone. The moral of the story is that you should always pay your sound person.
Of course, we were not the target audience. The many, many kids on hand seemed to have a great time. Birdie was on the younger side of the audience and was somewhat mystified by the goings on. She recognized her favorite songs and was happy to do some of the dance movies, but she also decided that she needed to be riveted to M's lap (not my lap, oh no, that wasn't good enough) for substantial periods of time so she could warily watch what was going on. She only got truly upset when beach balls were thrown into the audience and none of them came close enough to us for her to hit. On the whole, I'd say she enjoyed it, but unlike many of her other activities she hasn't really been talking about it since it happened.
I'd like to tell you that I found Laurie Berkner to be a lot better live than on the recording, but I did not. Fortunately, I derived a lot of enjoyment from watching Birdie watching the show, and a morning at a concert is still more fun than most other activities.
In happier news, Birdie's latest musical obsession is Crash Years off of The New Pornographers album Together, which she calls "The Whistle Song." I can take no credit for that; M also loves the New Pornographers and has been playing that album for Birdie in the car. Anyway, things are looking up!
The concert was a free performance put on by the Hudson Library, which thankfully was moved from the (quite hot) lawn of the Hudson library to the (air conditioned) high school auditorium. Although it was free, it did require preregistration to reserve a spot, so I woke up early on July 5 so I could be at my keyboard at 7am sharp to sign us up. It's a good thing I was, because at 7:05am the website reported that every spot had been claimed. As we would find out, the Hudson High School auditorium comfortably seats a few hundred people; Laurie Berkner is a big deal.
Berkner had recently broken her foot and was wearing a soft cast, which limited her mobility. She apologized for not running around and jumping as much as she apparently normally does, but her back up singer / dancer / hype woman Melissa made up for it - it looked like a pretty substantial workout.
It's unclear to me if that was because there were hundreds of excited small children or because they didn't hire a real sound person or because my middle-aged ears are failing out on me, but neither M nor I could really hear what Berkner was saying when she wasn't singing. I could hear the songs just fine from our seats, but most of her banter couldn't be heard even with her microphone. The moral of the story is that you should always pay your sound person.
Of course, we were not the target audience. The many, many kids on hand seemed to have a great time. Birdie was on the younger side of the audience and was somewhat mystified by the goings on. She recognized her favorite songs and was happy to do some of the dance movies, but she also decided that she needed to be riveted to M's lap (not my lap, oh no, that wasn't good enough) for substantial periods of time so she could warily watch what was going on. She only got truly upset when beach balls were thrown into the audience and none of them came close enough to us for her to hit. On the whole, I'd say she enjoyed it, but unlike many of her other activities she hasn't really been talking about it since it happened.
I'd like to tell you that I found Laurie Berkner to be a lot better live than on the recording, but I did not. Fortunately, I derived a lot of enjoyment from watching Birdie watching the show, and a morning at a concert is still more fun than most other activities.
In happier news, Birdie's latest musical obsession is Crash Years off of The New Pornographers album Together, which she calls "The Whistle Song." I can take no credit for that; M also loves the New Pornographers and has been playing that album for Birdie in the car. Anyway, things are looking up!