"Weird Al" Yankovic Strings Attached Tour
The place, Rochester Hills, Michigan
The location, Meadow Brook Amphitheatre
The date, July 5, 2019
The time, approximately 9:30 PM
Al Yankovic is tongue in cheek known as the Meadow Book "House Band". Whenever he and his band are in attendance, there is a crowd filling every possible place in the venue. July 5, 2019 was no different than any other tour visit of "Weird Al" at Meadow Brook, except for 1 thing. This time he brought along an almost 40-piece orchestra.
The orchestra was the "warm up act" for the show also. The orchestra performed the usual orchestra versions of Bond Themes and Star Wars hits. This was just getting the crowd ready for what was about to happen. Al performed the usual set of songs. This evening was to be no different than any other visit. The final song before the encore as expected was to be "Amish Paradise" as usual.
Except this night, Al brought along an almost 40-piece orchestra. The violins of the orchestra struck up the opening beat of the song. There were chills up and down my whole body like I have never ever experienced before in my life. Real violins playing the opening to the song, rather than a synthesizer. Chills.
The song played on. The violins continued. The chills continued.
The song moved on to the usual arm waving and shouting.
Then it happened. The song concluded.
There was a moment of hushed silence.
Did I just hear what I thought I heard?
Did I just experience what I thought I experienced?
Then it started. There was a roar. A roar of thousands of throats screaming is loud and long as they could. The roar went on. The roar continued further. The roar grew louder. The roar continued even further. The roar went on and on and on and on. Over 5 minutes the roar continued. Never once did the roar decrease in volume. Holding ones hands over the ears would only slightly reduce the volume of the roar. Your own throat screaming as loud as possible was only adding more to the roaring sound in your ears and the chills sensation in your body.
Any musical instrument player of any orchestra ever created could only wish for the reaction they received.
If I were on stage playing an instrument, this would be the single moment of my life I would have been entirely created for. All the rehearsals. All the auditions. All the practice. All the years of study, would have distilled down to those 5 minutes in that place at that time.
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