Drummer Boy 2009 at Grace Church

We made it to last night's final performance of the Drummer Boy at Grace Church and it was indeed an event. We were first stuck in traffic on northbound McKelvey for a while and did not make it into the building until barely before 8:00pm for the 9:00pm performance. We went with a group of ten and when we looked around in the main sanctuary we could not find any spaces that would accommodate our large group. We even went up to the balcony and looked there, but it was pretty full too, and it was pretty warm as well. The place was packed! We ended up going into their "chapel" which appeared to be an auditorium that would seat about 300, slightly larger then the main sanctuary at our own church. Plus they had very comfortable cushioned seats, similar to the ones at the Faith Fellowship in Alton where we watched Downhere perform. It has also designed in a similar fashion in that it was not very deep, but wide instead, allowing even people in the "back" of the chapel to be fairly close to the main stage. Our more traditional sanctuary at Mt. Zion UMC is much deeper and not nearly so wide, allowing people to sit way in the back and separate themselves from the proceedings at the altar. I can see why in a more contemporary sanctuary the "short and wide" style makes more sense.

Before the show started they had a tenor saxophone player who performed a number of Christmas Carols. He was excellent and reminiscent of Kenny G, playing some of the same material on Kenny's "Miracles" album. Then it was time for the main performance and they dimmed the lights and cranked up the volume. The sound system in the chapel was excellent and they had added extra speakers, but unfortunately it is difficult to capture live percussion to give you the same sense of being there. The video work was also very good, but whereas in the main auditorium the video screens help to enhance the live performance, here the video screens had to replace the live performance. It seemed to miss the "connection" you get when you sit in the main auditorium, and since we had experienced it from the main sanctuary last year, we could definitely feel a difference. For example, when we applauded it seemed a bit weird since we realized we were not actually in the same room as the performers. The show was still an exceptional show and flawlessly executed, but we definitely felt it missed something not being experienced completely live. In that respect, it is nicer to have our own much lower key performances in our smaller church where every performance is much more personal.

On a completely unrelated note, my son decided to work on his own blog, one about video gaming since that is what he likes doing more than anything. It is called David's Video Gamer News at videogamernews.blogspot.com and he is curious if anybody will actually visit it. I added my Google Adsense account to his blog and will let him have whatever the site earns in AdSense money. So if you want to help out my son you can visit his site and see what he thinks about video games on his Xbox 360, Wii, and Nintendo DSi.