Jason Wong, HKG, YVR, HNL

How many times have you experienced huge disappointment due to high anticipation?  I just got one not long ago.  Before coming to Honolulu, the first thing that I did was to book my concert ticket to see Miss Diana Krall’s night performance way back in December.  On the show night, I put on my up-beat jazzy-blue mood and I thought I would have a fabulous jazz night.  Well, it turned out that there were tons of non-Diana-related local celebration and performances that I did not know they were part of the programs in the beginning.  Don’t get me wrong, I was not saying those biz were bad - but it would be nice to give everyone (which was audience) some advance notice about the show might start late.  After 1+ hours of unrelated business, Miss Krall finally came to the stage and she sat in front of a Steinways and played and sang.  I was expecting her to go through her famous songs, like “The Look of Love”, “Charmed Life”, etc.  Guess what, there was absolutely nothing about those tracks.  The whole night was jammed (yes, really JAM) with piano banging, rushy SUBWAY feel singing.  Nothing worse than, the Honolulu Symphony was in the background and not playing much with 80% of her playlists.  Nobody could imagine how could a talented singer’s concert could turn out to be such a disaster.  I was not the only ones who kept shaking head after the performance.  In fact, there were many well-heeled, mature aged audiences who kept saying, “I wish she could use her talents on something better.”  There was absolutely not a single moment that you could remember what she sang and what she said.  It was BANG, BANG, BANG (piano I mean) and then, “THANK YOU FOR COMING!  GOOD NIGHT!”  After this incident, I needed many weeks, if not months, to reach out and see other performances.  Literally, one bad show can scar you for life!

Remember the old days where every Friday evening, I sat in front of the TV and enjoyed my Sex and the City episodes from Bravo! channel.  There was no doubt about the plots were always witty and the casts were giving out the best performance in everything.  Though not all episodes received enough MUSIC attention.  There were a handful of those that blended the motion pictures and music perfectly.  “A Woman’s Right to Shoes” is definitely one of them.  The last part where Carrie got her revenge and the music by Bona Fide’s Tio Pepe truly highlightened the victory about single people did not need relationship but still stay fabulous.  (Though I was in a relationship during that time but still it was great to see how single people won the battle over pity-marriage-look-down-society)