{"id":7563,"date":"2013-09-09T09:23:21","date_gmt":"2013-09-09T16:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=7563"},"modified":"2013-09-10T11:12:41","modified_gmt":"2013-09-10T18:12:41","slug":"celtic-thunder-defy-cohesion-please-victoria-crowd-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2013\/09\/09\/celtic-thunder-defy-cohesion-please-victoria-crowd-anyway\/","title":{"rendered":"Celtic Thunder defy cohesion, please Victoria crowd anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m completely puzzled as to why people would shell out so much money for a show like this, Celtic Thunder at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre here in Victoria (the $75 seats were all full). Not that the musicians were bad; they were all talented enough. But all I could think about was that a Celtic-themed bar band would have been just as good, and way more fun, for a fraction of the price (having played in such a band, I feel like I\u2019m some sort of authority on this).<\/p>\n

Though I pondered this through the whole show, an overheard comment on the way out partially enlightened me: \u201cI really like their specials on PBS.\u201d Ah: that explains the audience\u2019s median age of 55.<\/p>\n

The show was a strange mix of styles. The movement between Broadway ensemble numbers, adult-contemporary originals, solo torch songs, and traditional music defied any kind of cohesion. Six singers are too many to give the group the kind of character that a smaller ensemble can have.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Celtic Thunder: popular with the PBS crowd, but a bit too much of a mish-mash of sounds (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some of the singers are also instrumentalists, so there were smaller-group breakaway songs. A solid, straight-up bluegrass version of \u201cMan of Constant Sorrows\u201d showed off that versatility, but did not help clarify the show\u2019s sense of purpose.<\/p>\n

The strangest thing is that this band is billed as an Irish \u201csupergroup.\u201d While they are good at what they do, there is no unusually burgeoning talent to set them out from a crowd of equally decent groups. The original songs are the same inoffensive theatrical schlock that has been around for decades. The stage setup could easily be put together in a high-school theatre. The group only really shines in the traditional-material ensemble numbers and the up-tempo covers, and even then only when the band is not playing some hideous Van Dyke Parks-inspired orchestral arrangement.<\/p>\n

These guys could be a really great Celtic bar band. Minus a few singers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m completely puzzled as to why people would shell out so much money for a show like this, Celtic Thunder at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre here in Victoria (the $75 seats were all full). Not that the musicians were bad; they were all talented enough. But all I could think about was that a Celtic-themed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7563"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7569,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7563\/revisions\/7569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}