A Nerd and Her Camera: Trans-Siberian Orchestra, December 27th, 2013, West Band, Toyota Center, Houston, Texas

So the idea for this blog came to me after seeing a TSO concert, last night. I love photography, specifically concert photographer, I'm pretty sure I get more of a kick out of taking videos and taking photographs of the artists, who I just paid an insane amount of money to see, than actually watching the concert.

I may also post pictures from other places I travel with my camera, so this won't just be a concert blog, it may also just be a photography blog.

I already have my youtubechannel: http://www.youtube.com/user/JamieLyssa, which I've been posting concert videos on since 2009, when I saw Alice in Chains at the TLA in Philly, but I've never actually posted the pictures of concerts I've seen anywhere except facebook, so here we are, the launching of a concert photography and concert review website.

Mind you, I'm a poor teacher, and I don't get to see that many concerts, so I can't promise this will be an extremely active blog until I actually see a concert, although I may archive some of my older concert photos and add them to this website, as well. But, I will do the best I can, when I do see concerts, moving onwards:

The concert that pops the cherry on my new blog is Trans-Siberian Orchestra, the West Coast Band, seen on December 27th, 2012, at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas.

I've never seen TSO before. I remember, in NJ, always around Christmas time, they'd always show commercials for their shows in NYC, and there'd be all these men with crazy 80s rock hair and they'd play their mash-up of carol of the bells [which I didn't know the true name of until my fiance told me last year] and there'd be snow falling on the stage and crazy men playing pianos, mind you this was the early 90s.

I had heard of TSO, once facebook was released, I always heard people bragging about how awesome their concerts were and how they looked forward to them every year, but didn't think much of it.

Anyhow, my fiance was/is a huge Savatage fan, and even has the hair to prove it. Last Christmas, we were driving and listening to Savatage on my iPod, and Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24 started playing, and I was like, "It's the song from the TSO commercials", and that's when, one: I learned the real name of the song, and two: learned that TSO used to be some band called Savatage, but then they broke up and realized they could make a shit ton money in TSO [and good for them for figuring that out] and became Trans-Siberian Orchestra as we know it and love it today.

Since, he could never see Savatage again, and the closest thing we could ever come to a Savatage show was seeing Trans-Siberian Orchestra, we bought tickets to the Houston show, this year, and we weren't disappointed.

First of all, TSO has some CRAZY dedicated fans, all the people in the audience with us, had seen TSO like fifteen times or something crazy like that, and it seemed like their main fanbase consisted of middle aged women. We somehow managed to get seats on the floor, I figured out how to use the flashseats application on my phone, which was pretty bad-ass, and crushed like sardines, we awaited our first show.

Fiance was pretty pleased with their lineup. We had Al Pitrelli and Johnny Lee Middleton, who were both original members of Savatage, on lead guitar and bass guitar. We also had a hot electric violin player named Asha Mevlana, who was insanely talented, and I also love the sound of string playing in rock music such as in the band A Perfect Circle. I also really liked the two guitarists, even though they looked exactly alike, so I started nicknaming them Kili and Fili from The Hobbit since they sort of looked alike and had that dwarf long hair, but they were both very talented.

This was the set list:
1. Time and Distance
2. Winter Palace
[The Lost Christmas Eve]
1. Faith Noel
2. The Lost Christmas Eve
3. Wizards in Winter
4. Christmas Dreams
5. Christmas Nights in Blue
6. Christmas Jam
7. Siberian Sleigh Ride
8. What is Christmas?
9. For the Sake of Our Brother
10. Wish Liszt [Toy Shop Madness]
11. Back to a Reason [Part II]
12. What Child is this?
13. Christmas Canon Rock
14. Different Wings
[Act Two]
1. The Mountain
2. A Mad Russian's Christmas/Nutrocker
3. Someday
4. Sparks
5. Dreams of Fireflies [On a Christmas Night]
6. O Fortuna/Carmina Burana
7. Beethoven
8. Requiem [the 5th]
9. This Christmas Eve
10. Christmas Eve/Sarajevi 12/24

They played for three hours straight. I'll admit, I wasn't too into the really slow and depressing stuff because I'm more a rock lover, but the pretentious progressive rock songs such as The Mountain and Requiem [the 5th] were awesome.

I was sort of bored by The Lost Christmas Eve story-line, maybe because I'm a heathen and a Jew, who didn't know what a manger was. I liked some of the songs such as the title track, Christmas Nights in Blue, Christmas Jam, and Back to a Reason, Part II [which fiance tells me is originally a savatage track].

I much preferred Act Two, I really enjoyed The Mountain, which was originally Prelude into Madness from Hall of the Mountain King, by Savatage. I loved a Mad Russian's Christmas/Nutrocker because I love the Nutcracker and a hard rock version of it was pretty awesome. O Fortuna/Carmina Burana was pretty bad-ass too, and definitely one of the best versions I've heard of that song, much better than when my college choir performed Carmina Burana during my sophomore year. Requiem the 5th was nice and hard, my type of music. And of course Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24 was awesome and probably the one song everyone looked the most forward too, well at least, I did :x

Their stage show was AMAZING. The backdrop was this movie of a castle that changed into a hotel, a hospital, a toy shop, and a cool movie screen with awesome cheesy cg like a gigantic dragon. There were pyrotechnics and lasers galore. It snowed on the audience, although only the very front section of the audience gets snowed on. There were stone statues that looked like the weeping angels from Doctor Who, DON'T BLINK. There were rotating platforms on the stage, and in the back of the crowd on the floor that several band members were on and played at the platforms rose.

The only thing I didn't like were the very tall people with the big heads, who sat in front of me, and got in the way of my photography.

But I can definitely see why TSO are top ten ticket-selling bands in the first decade of the new millennium, and they were definitely worth the hype. We both really enjoyed the show,and plan to attend next year, although I think I'm going to pick different seats.

Anyhow, here are the photos, I hope you enjoy them.

Note: I am NOT a professional photographer, I'm just a nerd with a digital camera, I was not paid to take these pictures, these are not professional pictures, just pictures a fan took :)