So each year my family and I got to see Trans Siberian Orchestra around the Holiday season…its neat.

The group, whos famous Wizards of Winter inspired this masterpiece of a video, is composed of both singers and musicians who fuse together a classical rock orchestra, strong Christian undertones, and members of an 80’s rock band called Sabotage. It’s a thing of beauty…but this year stood out in my mind more than previous years for a few reasons.

Primarily it was the strings conductor. Now generally one thinks of a conductor as either an aging, balding white guy with dramatic arm movements that seem to guide the orchestra along on its way…or perhaps a more modern version which is a youthful Asian man with a big smile…but with TSO I was surprised to see a vivacious, punked out, EFFING HOT, British woman as the strings conductor (or at least she looked hot on stage). The even more awesome part was that she didn’t stand in front of the orchestra and guide them…no…she bounced around the stage rocking out on her neon pink, cut-out, electric violin. I swear, if she touched me, I would have mimicked the newest viral vid from SNL. The best part though…she could actually play…so not only was she a wonderful visual addition, but a superb audio incorporation.

In addition to the smokin’ hot violinist, the acoustic difference between nosebleed section and being three rows back from the stage really blew me away. Not only could I literally smell the greasy hair and sweat stains of the male singers, but I could literally feel all the clothes on my body; as they vibrated and pulsated to the huge base line and crazy rocktastic tunage coming from the stage. It was intense to say the least.

All in all, I liked the show a lot. Generally you can always depend on the first half of the show to have a Christian / Christmas undertone as a story is told by a baritone guy while the orchestra pumps out songs in a particular order. But then the good stuff happens in the second half, with hair flipping, violin rocking, Bach sucking, and generally a fantastically good holiday spectacular. I can understand why they only do 6 weeks of shows

The down sides I felt were:

1. The eye contact issue. Being as close as we were, whenever the musicians made eye contact with the crowd, I felt as though they were looking into my soul, and I felt violated.
 

2. I feel as though my corneas may have been slightly scorched out of my eyes by the impressive yet terrifyingly bright light show they have. My dad did some math and calculated 3,648 small bulbs in just the front row…with nearly 5 times that throughout the jungle gym of bars and fixtures hanging from the ceiling.
 

And
 

3. I don’t like the awkward feeling I get when watching my elders awkwardly clap or snap their fingers to music…its like they WANT to fit in…but…they just don’t. I don’t feel bad for me being associated with them…I just feel embarrassed for them.

SO…now that my negativity rant is over, I’d have to say, fireworks, boobs, hair flips, guitar riffs, and uber awesomeness really ruled the night. So my friends, go see TSO, and rock out with your Bach out!