Marty’s photos of the day #3505: Like many of you, the COVID-19 pandemic has kept Deb and me at home for eleven months and counting (and I’m holding off on a haircut until I get my vaccine). So the other day, I proposed that we dress up, have a fancy dinner, and attend a concert, like we used to do. Our date-night included a candlelit meal of wine, baked potatoes, broccoli, crab, and banana cream pie with a mountain of whipped cream. Since neither of us had dressed up in many months, I suggested that we set my camera on a tripod and take a picture. That meant hitting the timer on my camera and running to join Deb on the couch. Our dog, Nellie, thought it was the greatest game ever—and being that she is one-fourth dingo, she went into “dingo-mode.” Our laughing just encouraged her!
After dinner and photos, we travelled virtually to Russia to see the Dutch band Within Temptation in concert. In December 2018, we had seen Within Temptation in-person at a nightclub in Italy, with just 2,500 people, and the Russian concert we watched last night, which was filmed seven months later, featured a crowd of 112,000. Even though the crowd size was dramatically different, the set-lists were identical. Midway through the concert, Deb said to me, “I’m getting warm and fuzzy feelings about Italy all over again.”
Our set-up of feeding concerts through a digital projector and stereo system gives the shows a larger-than-life feel, but you don’t need a big set-up to enjoy streamed concerts. The hardest part is finding on-line concerts that are filmed well and have good-quality sound. The concert I found had the best of both. I almost passed it by, because the description was in Cyrillic, but I’m glad that didn’t scare me off (Within Temptation speaks and sings in English). So if you’d like to see an outstanding concert, by the best band in the world Americans haven’t heard of, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EstFo80BHRM