Do You Know the Way to San José?

A week ago, I was sitting in the HP Pavilion listening and rocking to Tina Turner. John and Martha sat on my right - they had seen Tina in concert 8 times over the years, and had tickets for the following night as well. "If she can do a whole tour," John said, "then we can come two nights."

There was much to see at this concert - on stage and off. The audience was such an array of people - the couple in row ahead of us had just come back from a quiet journey to China - they were in shock in the midst of all this rock and roll; there were groups of gal-pals; one woman left her child and family at home and had come alone (she had apparently found the bar as well); there were many men (Tina had them sing - what's love got to do with it); there were dressed up people with expensive adornments; and mostly there was a whole lot of enthusiastic people.

The show was a massive coordination, with fireworks, shooting flames, acrobatics and platforms that rose up and out into the audience. For the second last song, Nutbush City Limits, Tina was in a "cherry picker" machine that extended out 20 rows into the audience. At some point, she walked the length of the two-foot wide "arm" of the machine and then danced her way back to the end with a basket.

Here is a YouTube view of her on the platform from a previous tour:

Nutbush City Limits

And what a lot of work! We bought the program for the event, and the credits include 18 truck drivers!

Speaking of all the background support, there were a lot of helpers in getting us to Tina. Josh and Al got us to and from the airports safely (thank you!), Ryan met us in Oakland and showed us around San Francisco (thank you!)

The day of the show, Ryan and Julie got us to San José, and now I can assuredly say that I do know the way. San José is one hour from San Francisco, and so once they dropped us off at the Pavilion, they entertained themselves in San José with dining and shopping and text messaging us. At some point, Ryan called and Aimée held up the phone and he heard some of Proud Mary.

And he took pictures for us...



Speaking of pictures, as you can see on the ticket, it explicitly says not to bring in cameras, so we left ours with Ryan. And then when we got seated, we could see that many, many people had cameras. (And Aimée had a picture-taking phone.) The ticket taker said, "oh, yes, small cameras are OK." Note to others: bring your camera.

It was quite the show that you would want to take pictures - Tina is one picture-taking kind of act. On some website, I read a headline, "What's age got to do with it?" Indeed, as you can see, Tina is looking pretty fit... (this picture is from this year's tour)



With dazzling clothing as well, and shoes! She came out with shoes by Christian Louboutin; the signature of his shoes is that they have a red sole. According to a show on Oprah, these are the most comfortable high heels a gal can have. The cost? Let's just say, they are bourgee.

I asked Aimée what was the most surprising part of the show - she said, "That it was so theatrical." For me, I was most surprised (and delighted) to find out that there was no introductory bands/singers - we got 100% Tina. And we got a view of the crowd that was spectacular. 14,000 people (this would be a good deal more than the population of Nelson). Tina is famous for having sold more concert tickets than any other solo performer in music's history. And this all started when she was hired as a back up singer. Clearly that role was too small for her.

We saw her on Day 19 of her tour - she has several more weeks, and then after the new year is heading to Europe. Lots of time to get your tickets. It is definitely worth the trip!