Friday, October 3, 2008 | by nathan

I Almost Surrendered A Very Expensive Camera For This, So You’re Going To Watch It And Enjoy It

I haven’t had a chance to write about the show yet. The main reason for this is that the show blew my face off so hard that I’ve been slowly reconstructing it from old bits of hoof - that’s why it looks that way - and part of this is because after the concert I had to get up at 5 a.m., fly my happy ass back to Oklahoma City, go pick up Sam at Jaye and Laurie’s, spend an entire day at work, then head to my mom’s house for fried chicken and a vice-presidential debate.

Mom & I had a great time in Kansas City, which is a much cooler town than I’ve been led to believe. We got there, picked up the rental car and checked into our hotel, before heading downtown for a fantastic meal at an Irish pub across the street from the Sprint Center. It was the first time I’ve ever had Shepherd’s Pie in America, and it was delicious.

I’d been racking my brain for ways to sneak my digital SLR into the show. My opportunity came when our rental car’s Garmin unit came prepackaged in a tiny little duffle bag, just the size of your fist, that had the word GARMIN stamped in big white letters across it. So I took the lens off the camera, stuffed it into one of the zip pockets inside mom’s purse, and put the body of the camera in the little GARMIN duffle bag, then put that in her purse, hoping security wouldn’t open it. They didn’t.

The show - wow. The show. Started with Tina singing a few bars of "Get Back" by the Beatles, then the curtains opened, and - well, I’ll let the photos show you the rest. I was happily snapping away through the first two songs, and then right at the beginning of "River Deep - Mountain High" a GIGANTIC dude came over, pulled my head down, and whispered in my ear that he was "head of security for Tina Turner." He informed me that this was my one warning and that he didn’t want to see my camera again.

That’s the sound of me pissing my pants.

Mom and I kept an eye on him the rest of the show, and I took photos when I could. By the end, though, he and the ushers were really skulking around trying to catch me, and I’d made up my mind that I’d rather surrender the camera itself than the photos - if he came back, I decided, I’d pop the memory card out and I’d SWALLOW that mother if I had to; luckily it didn’t come to that, though my picture-taking really sorta petered off after that. By "Proud Mary" I felt like there was pretty much a constant eye on me from somewhere, and so a few of the photos near the end are taken from my iPhone.

The show was about what you’d expect: a collection of hits, the standard dancers, tons of pyrotechnics. At one point they physically built Thunderdome on the stage and essentially re-created a scene from that movie, which was one of my favorites as a child. Following an intermission she and her band did something I wish they’d do more of: sat and did a short acoustic set, just sitting and singing. It ended with Tina flying above the crowd - and directly above mine and mom’s heads - on a freaking crane.

At any rate, it was an amazing, amazing show, and you may not be a fan of Tina’s music, but you’ve gotta hand it to someone who can be 68 years old and still doing this: