Barenaked Ladies & Trans-Siberian Orchestra

This past week, I saw/heard two concerts. Barenaked Ladies on Tuesday night, and Trans-Siberian Orchestra last night (Sunday).

We might as well be chronological about this, so I’ll start with Barenaked Ladies. It was a really fun show, they played a nice mix of old classics and the new stuff, and even a version of Feliz Navidad sang by Tyler Stewart (calling himself ‘Seasonal Sam’)

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra show was very entertaining. Maybe I’m just dense, but I never realized that each of their albums has a story. The first half of the show was essentially their first album, but they have a narrator who linked the songs to each other (the lyrics and narrations are all on their site). This was accompanied by a wild light show. The second half was a little bit of everything, some of their other Christmas songs (Wizards in Winter, Christmas Canon, etc.) as well as non-Christmas things, like a cover of Layla and O Fortuna from Carmina Burana.

I don’t think the other people with me liked the first half as much as I did; unless you’ve heard them before and listened to the lyrics, some of the lighter ballads can seem a little depressing. Once you get to know them, they’re actually really good and not a downer at all.