Trans-Siberian Orchestra 2014

This was my fourth time seeing Trans-​Siberian Orchestra. To give you an idea of how much I LOVED the previous three shows, I will tell you that I was at the box office in New Orleans within 10 minutes of the tickets going on sale. I very happily paid $ 160 for two tickets and was positive my beau would fall in love with the band and it could be an annual tradition for us. The very best part of the night was that around $ 11,000 from ticket sales was donated to Second Harvest Food Bank. Super cool! As for the rest of the «show,» here’s the short version ~ we left early. It was that bad. That boring. That ridiculous. The «story» was not interesting, hard to follow, and frankly, quite boring. The show is now filled with a lot more solo vocals — one was good, a couple were tolerable, and the rest were slow and hard to understand for the singer being too close to the mic or too loud. They skipped nearly all of their really good songs and I think I recall their doing only two or three well-​known Christmas songs. The fantastic «light show» that has always been a big part of the show was nearly non-​existent. The dancers/​backup singers appeared to be little more than objects to view (think of a combination between cheerleader and stripper). The previous woman fiddle player was beyond impressive and I was most looking forward to her performance. She’s gone. If the current woman fiddle player really can play the fiddle well, it wasn’t demonstrated. But, boy oh boy, that girl can flip her hair like nobody’s business! That was the absolutely worst and most distracting part of the show — all the incessant long hair flipping (think David Lee Roth circa 1979). Combine that with the very comical «rocker» poses (that were never even a noticeable part of the three previous shows I’ve seen) and it all comes down to one very expensive and big disappointment.