Back to the Earth

I saw posters for it. I think the first one was at a little electronics store I used to get cheap boxes of blank cassettes from, they were a Casio dealer. Anyway nearer to the show date there were posters on the streets and newspaper ads. There were 2 big shows for the Statue of Liberty Centennial. One had Ronald Reagan and I think they lit up the statue which had been restored and the other show on a different night was Tomita's.

Anyway I figured it was worth arriving several hours early so my idea was to see if I could sit on something and have a good view. So I found a great place on a raised memorial plaza with already a couple people, but I realized all those people were press people setting up and I think someone said I couldn't stay in the press area. Fortunately that happened while there were only a tiny number of people waiting, so "Plan B" was since there was nowhere else with something to sit on, by far the next best location was right up front under the pyramid so no one could block my view as I was the "front row". Anyway I recognized Tomita walking by presumably to catch a dinner break and someone with him had some programs which were eventually passed out to everyone who wanted them. He signed the back in ballpoint with a pictogram, something I've found most show business people have ready for special occasions. Had I known of course I'd have a silver pen because the booklet was dark on the cover and had text all over the white pages (but of course those things leak half the time - I almost had a mishap once with another great composer). I could also tell he did not speak English but it was quite a thrill none the less. One person who I think was a Japanese woman also recognized him and got his autograph. He wasn't changed into his evening space wear yet. I don't remember him coming back,maybe people were in front of me or he took a boat. I remember the Pyramid was on a crane, it would get lowered onto what I think was a floating dock kind of thing that looked like it would be used for dockside construction.

The show was impressive. The fireworks were big and impressive, there were green lasers but mainly I guess the spatial sound was interesting and the sound bouncing back off the tall buildings a block or 2 away was unique. I guess the down point, and the audience did get a bit restless was the radio mic on the "Rhapsody in Blue" pianist kept cutting out so the audience heard a good chunk of the piece in on and off fragments, but the show did go on. As you can see on the program there were also some more pieces that didn't fit on the CD release, though all the non-album tracks are included. I think I knew from the program that things were going to float by, but it was very impressive and amusing to have something or other musical fly or float by on so many pieces. I'm still sort of wondering if I can be seen on the video of it because I saw a camera on a crane go past me a number of times for crowd shots and I was at the front of the crowd

I picked up a second unsigned program after it was over, which I guess was a bit hard to find, there were some stepped on ones but there were at least 100,000 people, probably more so there weren't cases of extras or anything like that. I scanned the unsigned one since the pictogram doesn't make the text so readable.

 

Awesome...and what a great plan you had for getting up front seating. I guess it worked! If you ever get a chance to scan Tomita's pictogram/signature, I'm sure others would like to see it (in addition to myself). Heck...even if it's not that readable it would still be neat to see.

I was lucky enough to see the Jarre Rendezvous Houston concert back in 1986(?). It was so surreal, it seemed like a dream. I'll never forget the imagery - laser images projected onto the tall buildings, fireworks and spotlights shooting off of the building roofs (in sync, no less) and other really spectacular stuff.