A TSO Concert Without Their Best Violinist???? Madness!

Wednesday October 15, 2008

Ok, so I know I haven't written anything here in a long while, but tonight I just have to. For the very least to save my sanity...

Let me start at the beginning. For those of you who don't know who or what Trans Siberian Orchestra (TSO) is it is a Rock/Classical Christmas music band that does a Winter tour every year around Christmas time. They are freakin' awesome!! They have two groups (West and East) that tour because they tour the entire US and don't have enough time for one group to do it all. I found out about TSO through a friend from my old job and fell in love with the music instantly. The first song I heard of theirs was Christmas Eve Sarajevo. Absolutely LOVE it!! It's not traditional Christmas music you hear as you walk through the mall, or any department store in the good ole' US of A. It is ROCK Christmas music with electric guitars, bass drums and everything else you'd expect to hear in a rock song. It raises the roof in our house around Christmas time. The live shows will blow your mind if you take a notion to go to one! The lights, the snow, everything!!

Last year we decided to get tickets to their Oklahoma City tour, which happens to be in the West Coast tour's territory. We got Anna Phoebe last year. Who is Anna Phoebe? Only the coolest violinist out there!! She plays this outrageously awesome pink Violectra (an electric violin) and her performances are out of this world! A simple Google search will tell you all you need to know about her. Anyway, this year since we've moved to Houston, we got tickets to the Houston show. The bonus was finding out that Anna Phoebe was playing Houston this year when I checked the tour schedule when it was first posted. The in-laws are coming into town and my mom is coming out from Phoenix to spend Christmas with us in our new house. Everyone is stoked about the concert!

Flash forward to present day and I just found out that the TSO touring management has decided to switch Anna Phoebe to the East Coast tour and replace her with Mark Wood! OMG!! Now I don't know who this Mark Wood is, I've never seen him, but I don't know if anyone can replace Anna Phoebe. It's rather upsetting that the announcement was made after tickets went on sale. I'm not saying that I would not have bought tickets to the Houston show if I had known before today that Anna wasn't playing there...I just wouldn't have gotten so psyched about her coming to Houston because now she's not touring here.

I love everything about TSO, I really do, but...there's something about the show with Anna that gives it a really huge umphh factor. I'm just glad that Angus, Al, Jane and all the rest are still touring the West.

So, the TSO concert without their best violinist?? Madness!! Absolute Madness!! We shall see how Mark Wood holds up to the West tour fans expectations. I just know it won't be the same without our Anna!

Now that it's off my chest maybe I can get over it...it just better be freakin' awesome is all I can say!

UPDATE (10/15/08 9:36pm):
I'm not taking back anything I said above, however, I am going to say that I feel better about this switch after checking out the replacement string master for Anna, Mark Wood. It seems that the East tour fans feel the same way about losing Mark this year as I'm sure the West tour fans feel about losing Anna this year. We all want "our" string masters! Perhaps this won't be as disasterous as I had it in my head to be.

The show is going to be freakin' awesome no matter who tours! I know that, I just have to get over the shock of the switch.

CAN'T WAIT FOR DECEMBER 28th!!!!!!!!