Thursday, December 08, 2005

Seven days...


OLVerizon
Originally uploaded by nieve44.
...in 7 days Ottmar will bring his current Holiday tour to Houston and I thought it would be nice to go back and re-live Ottmar's last concert. That concert was magical and looking forward to more magic on December 15, 2005.

In the LE boxed set of La Semana, Ottmar wrote a small intro about the song, Carrousel..."What a great loaded word...Carrousel of life comes to mind, carrousel of love, carnival, freak show, excitement, out of the ordinary, sweets, escape...etc..." Ottmar's concert here in Houston was all of the above...minus the freak show. I had perfect seats--4th row dead center, which made for a perfect view. Some of the best seats, I've ever had for any concert and well worth the price. I'm not a fan of Verizon Wireless theatre as the venue is not an intimate setting that compliments OL and the band. Nonetheless, the concert was magical and it ended all too soon. The eight o'clock hour could not come soon enough but then finally the band walks on stage and the magic begins.

Hearing OL play the guitar live is simply stunning and while the music on CD is great his music is so much more enjoyable in person. There were many highlights throughout the show but my favorites included, "La Luna", "Querencia", "Snakecharmer", "Santa Fe" & "Ballad 4 Santana". My new favorite is "Cocteau", which in the past had been my least favorite song from La Semana. Of course the Drum Duet was exceptional and Jon's bass was incomparable. I finally bought his Transit CD which I totally love. The icing on the cake was meeting Ottmar outside his bus and having him sign my La Luna postcard from the box set. We exchanged a few words and he was gracious as always.

The only disappointment was not being able to get a copy of the setlist to which I had requested twice. :-( The setlist would have been another wonderful memento from the evening to add to my box. As mentioned earlier, I'm not a fan of Verizon as they do not allow pictures to be taken. For once I had the perfect seats/view but could not capture the evening with a camera. Regrettably, my camera phone was not working either. I did notice some flashes going off during concert to which I was shocked and silently yelled, "no fair", but after the show I rushed to my car and grabbed my camera and perfectly timed Ottmar before he boarded his bus. He was in a hurry to get inside the bus and afterwards I noticed he blogged immediately thereafter.

While browsing the website, I came upon his blog from Integral Naked to which he wrote and I'll close this blog with..."Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away". Sunday evening surely took my breath away.

2 comments:

Borya said...

I'm quiet certain that you'll hear one or two more xmas songs than I did. "O little town of Bethlehem" for sure and maybe "O holy night". Make sure to be able to update the setlist I posted. I'm curious if and how Ottmar changed the songs.

shyloh's poetry said...

Lucky girl.