Repeating the advisory: I got my Dreamwidth bug-out account a couple months ago, and confess I haven't done much with it but occasionally re-back-up my posts to it. I'm not saying I'm ready to jump over to it just now, but that does depend on whether I can figure out how to schedule a post to appear at a set time or whether I have to go back to formally hitting a ``Post'' button on something at just past midnight every day.
The venue was new, or new-looking, although with a familiar sort of layout. We didn't have balcony seats; we were set in the back, behind the lowered area in front of the stage. We were also near one of the bars, which would be convenient if we'd wanted anything to drink. We, being just off dinne as we were, didn't, but it was nice having the option. The chairs weren't fixed in place, just tied together, suggesting sometimes they hold the kinds of shows everybody's standing or dancing for.
bunny_hugger's father went over to the merchandise table looking for some fitting souvenir but didn't find anything, not even a program or a T-shirt or the like. This seemed like he must got something wrong --- my hypothesis is he went to the opening act's merch table and missed the main act's --- but we were too busy being spheres to check ourselves. I was, anyway.
I forget who the opening act was. Some Ann Arbor-area performer playing acoustic guitar, and he put on a pleasant half-hour or so of songs. What stands out in my memory is how he tried to get the audience to sing the chorus of something. But it was a chorus with like four lines, and that's a lot to ask of a crowd if it isn't ``Hey Jude''. Needed another round or two of rehearsal, or to cut the number of audience lines down.
The main concert was Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, together but alone, and playing guitar and keyboard. It's the sort of low-key show performers do when they don't want too complicated a tour. bunny_hugger's father had worried that wouldn't show off Benatar's voice to her best effect. Wasn't needed; while it's possible her voice isn't as powerful as it was in the early 80s it would be hard to tell from her performance.
The show opened with a little biographical video about Benatar and Girardo, and the performance was interspersed with a fair bit of biographic or storytelling about their careers. It also made me aware that I know more Pat Benatar songs than I would have bet on knowing. bunny_hugger's father was curious how many of her songs we knew versus how many were obscurities to us, although his estimate of what was obscure was skewed. For example I'd not have thought of ``Hell is For Children'' if you asked me to name five Benatar/Giraldo songs, but it wasn't something new to me.
Near the end of the main show bunny_hugger whispered ``I hope they don't forget to play `Anna Sun','' our joke about predicting what would be saved for the finale. And I realized I wasn't sure what would be the finale, since ``Hit Me With Your Best Shot'', ``Love Is A Battlefield'', and ``We Belong'' had already been used. The correct answer, of course, was ``Heartbreaker'', although done as a medley with ``Ring of Fire''. bunny_hugger didn't call it either, somehow.
So it was a fun show. Grand time. I'm not sure whether to rate Benatar/Giraldo as the biggest act we've seen or whether Yes, last summer, should count.
I'd expected a bit of a mob getting out of the parking lot, and there wasn't anything to speak of. Perhaps everyone was getting a late dinner, or maybe the closeness of the highway meant one mere concert couldn't produce a traffic jam. Hard to say. We drove back to our house, as bunny_hugger's father had driven up to ours, and he drove home from there despite his not really liking night driving. We had offered to pick him up at his house, but he didn't want to do that for some reason.
Trivia: Vitagraph cameraman Albert Smith claimed, years after the fact, to have filmed Leon Czolgosz's shooting of President William McKinley. No footage of this survives and no contemporary reports indicate such film was exhibited. Source: The American Newsreel 1911-1967, Raymond Fielding.
Currently Reading: Gateway To The Moon: Building the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex, Charles D Benson, William B Faherty. NASA SP-4204, excerpted.
PS: How March 2017 Treated My Mathematics Blog considering I kind of forgot to write it.