Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

We stopped first in Philadelphia for dinner in a restaurant neither of us had tried before: the City Tavern. It's a historic building that has been a restaurant dating back to colonial days and which is supposedly haunted, although I didn't get a sense of that. Perhaps we were in the wrong room.

They seated us upstairs. The room was fairly quiet when we got there, mostly because it was so early.

The menu fare seemed basic enough but actually turned out to be fancier in terms of presentation. I ordered the Mahi-Mahi, which I'm not convinced would have been on the colonial menu. I had enough to save for later.

The waiters and all the staff there dress in colonial garb. They serve water in pewter cups and the wine in glasses. It's a classy place, with authentic decor, right down to reproduction (I'm assuming) antique chairs and old wooden floors. It would be a great place to take a visiting friend or relative.

We had parked in a parking garage, and after dropping off my leftover Mahi-Mahi, we headed for the Camden Ferry. The idea was to take that across the Delaware River. It would drop us at the Camden Waterfront, right near the Tweeter Center.

Although there were hundreds of people in line, there were no nearby public restrooms. This, of course, made the line seem worse. They could fit upwards of 200 people on the boat, so each time one arrived, about every 15 minutes, the line moved quickly. Still, it took several such passes before we got on.

I have to admit, once we were aboard, I was concentrating more on the state of my bladder than the view from the ferry. Although I have to agree with the Gryphon; it was a more relaxing way to enter Camden than dealing with traffic jams.

When we disembarked, I told The Gryphon to follow the crowd. That was before I realized there was some sort of festival going on, a Puerto Rican cultural festival. First we thought that we should go around it and then realized all the walkways were blocked off and we had to go through it. This slowed us down a bit.

We were already a little late, but we weren't concerned. Usually, there's an opening act. When we reached the Tweeter Center, it was close to 8 but I didn't think it was that late. After making a beeline for the restrooms, I leisurely checked out what sort of drinks they were selling and then headed for the T-shirt table.

While we were at the T-shirt table, The Gryphon noticed a TV monitor above, which showed Sting performing with a guitarist on-stage. The Gryphon said, "Oh, they're playing a tape of Sting."

I said, "No, that's what's happening on stage." But we needn't have rushed to find our seats; the television was the best view we'd have of Sting all night.

Now I don't remember exactly when I purchased these tickets, but I know it was at least the day they went on sale, if it wasn't the hour they went on sale. Still, we were in the pavilion but far back and to the right of center. This meant that we got an excellent view of the stage but a terrible view of the individual performers.

Sting finished his song and left the stage. I can only assume he had warmed up the audience with a stripped down version of his act, serving as the opening act. Because then, without changing anything but the musicians, Annie Lennox took the stage.

She had chosen very simple staging, performing in front of a silver curtain with a lot of spotlights and colored lights which only rose up a little further than head height. It made for very simple, intimate lighting. The only really creative use of lighting was when she sat down to perform "Here Comes the Rain Again" on the piano. She was backlit, her hair glowing like a halo.

Her music was similarly stripped down; even when she did Eurythmics songs, such as "Sweet Dreams, " the instrumentation stuck to basics, with none of the New Wave techno sound of the '80s.

I told The Gryphon he didn't have to worry about me taking my notebook and jotting down the set list. Except for the older hits and the scattered albums I happen to have, I wouldn't have known the names of the songs Annie Lennox and Sting performed, even though I recognized most of them.

One thing I knew for sure by the end of her set: Annie can sing. By and large, I do tend to gravitate towards the rock stars and musicians who really have talent, and she demonstrated it that night.

She did a beautiful version of "Here Comes the Rain Again," sung as a ballad at the piano. She performed such hits as "Walking on Broken Glass" and a lot of her more recent songs, although she didn't do the theme song from "Lord of the Rings," for which she won an Oscar. The Gryphon guessed that maybe she doesn't have the performance rights to it.

The most amazing thing about Annie's voice is that she mostly stays in the alto range, but what she does with subtle expression far exceeds what a lot of divas try to do with all their showboating.

For the first couple songs, Annie was wearing a knit hat. She then took it off, exposing her bleached blonde, close-cropped hair. This, to Annie Lennox fans, was like Sting taking off his jacket, which we discovered later in the night.

Even though we could never see her face, since there were no large projection screen showing close-ups, she seemed very relaxed and comfortable. She got into the groove and danced, swaying her hips back and forth and making graceful arm movements. She was wearing a hip belt over a pair of jeans, and it caught the light and sparkled. Up top, she just wore a black tank top. I remarked to The Gryphon that her hips are where she wanted us to look.

At one point, while she was swaying to the music, The Gryphon said to me, "Now I know where you learned to dance." Really? I'll take that compliment, for sure.

Then came a set break, during which I walked around a little and bought a Jack Daniels hard lemonade.

Sting's set was completely different. He opted for what I would call the New Age Rock Star staging: banks of lights in red, orange, yellow, blue, green, creating a rich atmosphere. On two narrow screens images were projected to match his songs. They could be dancers (hippies in the woods with bamboo hula hoops, belly dancers, burlesque dancers), scenes from nature (mountains, fields), or simple color (gold, red).

For example, during "Fields of Gold," gold squares moved slowly up the screen. There was one bank of lights which could rotate and move up and down, creating extra atmospheric drama.

Of course, when he performed "Roxanne," only one color was used in both the lighting and the screens. That was red.

Sting was a real crowd pleaser. He performed a nice range of songs from throughout his career, ranging from Police songs like "King of Pain," "Englishman in New York" and "Every Breath You Take" (done as an encore) to solo songs like "Fields of Gold."

He didn't do "Brand New Day," which surprised me a little bit. He did do "If I Ever Lose My Faith," which was near the end of the evening. He projected a lot of symbols on the screen for different religions. When he sang the line about how he's lost his faith in politicians, a lot of people cheered.

Now The Gryphon had enjoyed Annie Lennox, but he really got into the Sting concert. It was then that I remembered that Synchronicity had been one of his favorite albums back in the day.

Annie did a duet with Sting to "We'll Be Together," dressed in an off-white pants suit with flared pants. They had a lot of fun with it; she had a lot of energy, getting bouncy in her dancing. He joined in, feeding off that energy and giving some back. At the end of it, they kissed each other on the cheeks and shared a hug before she waved to the audience and sauntered off.

It occurred to me that Sting brings out her fun side, the "child within." Put another way, she turns into a little girl around him.

Later on, he did another duet with one of his backup singers, a powerful rendition that really wowed the audience.

Sting, by the way, was dressed in what I call his "alternative English gentleman" look. He wore a black shirt with white cuffs and a white collar, along with black pants and a black jacket, which he threw off, giving the audience a thrill.

Someone behind me yelled, "Take your shirt off!" He failed to do so.

He actually did two encores. The first involved three songs. And one of the songs he did was "Every Breath You Take," to fantastic applause.

We had a great time. The weather was really mild. There was a good range of people there. So far the only concert I've attended at the Tweeter Center that had more diversity was Santana last year. This audience contained ages ranging from preteen to people in their 60's. The makeup of the group seemed diverse ethnically, as well. A lot of people were dressed in sort of casual New Age type clothes or more trendy summer gear.

On the way home, we had a long wait for the ferry. I had worn these black wedge shoes because they looked cool with my black miniskirt (worn in public for the first time since New Year's 1994), but I hadn't considered that my feet would get sore if I did any amount of walking. I'd underestimated how much walking we'd be doing.

My feet were burning, and when we stood on a slope, it was the worst. I ended up sitting down on the sidewalk.

On the ferry, we got a bench. Even though it was only a seven minute ride, I fell asleep on The Gryphon's shoulder. He was so sweet; he even offered to hail us a cab to get us to the parking garage, but I told him I'd tough it out. He kept me talking on the way home to make sure my sleepiness didn't take over.

He told me the next day he'd had a terrific time. I had to agree.

Copyright 2004 by Alyce Wilson

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