Jeans 'n Classics show

Thursday night we went to see "One Vision - The Music of Queen" by Jeans 'n Classics. Jeans 'n Classics fuses a local orchestra or symphony and a rock band (and sometimes a local chorus group) to play the music of an artist or band. The music has been rearranged for  the fuller orchestral sound.

It was a very interesting show. I think of Queen's music as having a very full sound and I thought it would sound great played by an orchestra. I was right; the music did sound good. It wasn't a brilliant adaptation and the arrangement didn't add anything special to the music or enhance it in any way but it was still interesting to listen to and we both enjoyed it.

One thing that was super-awesome was that one of the backup singers was Rique Franks who voices the announcements on Showcase and Showcase Diva. She gave us a demonstration: "The following program contains sax and violins and viewer discretion is advised." Ha ha :)

The only complaint we had was about the lead singer. He tried to get the crowd riled up but the crowd wasn't all that interested in being riled up and he didn't really seem to get that. It was like he has a schtick that he had to run through no matter what - and that schtick needs to be updated. He also had a rather annoying tendency to spin his mike stand around which was visually disruptive. We could have overlooked all of that but he really didn't have the vocal chops to "do" Freddie Mercury. Occasionally the timbre of his voice was right but it didn't have the range and his diction and pacing were completely off.

While we mostly enjoyed the show, we much preferred the Classic Albums Live show that we saw a couple of months ago. Jeans 'n Classics was fun and all but Classic Albums Live provided a better introduction to the music and the musicians were able to both play the music note-perfect and enhance the music with the choices they made.

I might think about seeing a Jeans n' Classics show again, but not with this lead singer. And if I had to choose between the two shows, I'd pick Classic Albums Live.