Twelve Twenty-Four -- Bethlehem, PA -- December 27th, 2009

[Maiden33]

Well last night was my second time seeing Twelve Twenty-Four, a regional Trans-Siberian Orchestra tribute project, which in my opinion, is better than the real deal. There's less focus on the pointless special effects and overblown theatrics and more focus on the true spirit and the music itself, not to mention they change their set list a bit every year. After the show we hung out with everyone for a while again, all in all it was a fantastic show and evening as whole.

Set list:
01.Wizards in Winter
02.An Angel Came Down
03.O Come All Ye Faithful
04.Prince of Peace
05.A Mad Russian's Christmas
06.An Angel's Share
07.Good King Joy
08.Music Box Blues
09.Ornament
10.Old City Bar
11.Christmas Eve / Sarajevo (12/24)
12.Christmas Dreams
13.Promises to Keep
14.An Angel Returned
-Intermission-
15.little Drummer Boy (12/24 Original Arrangement)
16.Tracers
17.Mozart / Figaro
18.Christmas Nights in Blue
19.Proud Mary (CCR Cover)
20.A last Illusion / Flight of the Bumblebee
21.The March of Kings
22.Christmas Canon Rock
23.For the Sake of Our Brother
24.Requiem (The Fifth)
25.The Three Kings and I (What Really Happened)
26.Palladio (Karl Jenkins piece)
27.Kashmir (led Zeppelin cover)
28.I'll Keep Your Secrets
29.This Christmas Day
Encore:
30.Winter Wonderland

[mankvill]

I dunno mang, my Aunt saw TSO here and said it was amazing.

[maidenpriest]

Originally Posted by mankvill

I dunno mang, my Aunt saw TSO here and said it was amazing.

yeah i have to agree, saw the show in phoenix couple weeks ago, got free tickets and it was amazing

[Maiden33]

I don't want to get into a big ordeal over this, but this is the simplest way I can describe it:

If you want to go see an overblown spectacle of lights, special effects, and preprocessed performances, go see TSO.

However if you actually care about the songs themselves and the true spirit and meaning within them, this is a much better show.
I don't expect the average person to agree with me, because the average person doesn't feel the same way about the actual music of TSO as I do, being that is the direct biproduct of my 2nd favorite band. The theater setting and simplified approach of this production makes it much better. Not to mention the song selection is about 15x better and they actually change shit up year to year.

[mankvill]

Yeah, I guess I kinda understand where you're coming from. Having never listened to TSO, wouldn't just hearing Christmas music be kinda boring?

[Maiden33]

Originally Posted by mankvill

Yeah, I guess I kinda understand where you're coming from. Having never listened to TSO, wouldn't just hearing Christmas music be kinda boring?

Common misconception about TSO: It's not simply Christmas music.
Firstly, there's two entire albums that aren't Christmas-related, one has huge classical overtones and references within the instrumentals. But the common theme between all of them is that they are sort of "rock operas", they have a conceptual story running through them, and TSO has many songs that are actual lyrical songs and original compositions. It's not simply Christmas music repackaged with heavy guitars, though there are definitely instrumentals which are just that.