the writing in this isn't great seeing as it's 9:30 and I'm here at work on a Saturday...:-(

As part of a delayed Christmas gift, Anya took me to the symphony last night to watch their performance with a Beatles Tribute Band called "Magical Symphony Tour." We both had a great time, but I think that I was on a different excitement level than Anya. To me, this was probably the closest I'll ever come to seeing 'The Beatles' perform live.

Each member of 'MST' did an outstanding job of sounding just like the Beatle they were impersonating. It's one thing to sound like a Beatle when they're talking, but these guys sounded like the Beatles when they were singing. When I closed my eyes, it was almost impossible to tell a difference sometimes between the group and the actual Beatles recordings that I'd heard thousands of times prior. The man who played Paul was perfect. Honestly, I couldn't tell a difference between him and the actual Paul sometimes. He even had Paul's mannerisms and speaking patterns down. The guy who played John was pretty good. He'd slip between really good and not as good sometimes, but overall he pulled it off really well. I think John's singing voice would have been the hardest one to imitate as accurately. George and John were pretty good too.

Luckily, our seats were just far enough back that we couldn't really see any detail on how they looked. So to us, they actually DID look like the Beatles too. From far enough back, everyone can look like anyone.

I liked how the band and the symphony went through the entire decade and picked some of the Beatles best songs, instead of sticking on either early, mid, or late Beatles recordings. They chose a wide variety of songs to perform, spanning their entire career. The coolest though is that when John would sing, "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" or Paul would sing "Yesterday," the other members would go backstage and change into the Sgt. Peppers costumes, or into the old school "Abbey Road" costumes. It really added a lot. It was kinda like seeing a cartoon come to life.

My favorite performances of the night were the ones that the symphony got involved in. It was really neat to hear just the band, but when the band got involved with the symphony, it at times sounded just like we were listening to the recording.

I really enjoyed all of the songs, but my favorite of the evening was when they sang, "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band." As anyone who's familiar with the recording can attest, there is a lot of background activity in that song, all of which the symphony performed. They even did the little warm up/talking intro and the "audience noise" and laughing mid-song that the original has. Plus, the song just completely kicks ass. It must have been really great to have been a music fan in that era. I bet most people at that time probably thought that the Beatles may have been on the way out, and then they came out with "Sgt. Peppers" and it completely just breaks down the wall.

The surprise of the evening was their performance of "A Day in the Life." I thought that song would have been two difficult for the symphony as it has two major, atonal symphonic moments where the symphony swells and swells to one note, leading to another part of the song. It was surprising to hear them start playing that song. They performed it really well.

It was a great evening though. I really enjoyed hearing "Magical Symphony Tour" perform.