Front Row Seats
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice! And if you’re really famous you get to Madison Square Garden.
I’ve seen The Rolling Stones at the Garden and two years ago we were there for Paul Simon’s farewell concert. And a few years before that my friend Vivian and I were at the Garden to hear the wonderful tenor and crossover artist Andrea Bocelli.
I remember that our seats were way up in that cavernous venue, and after the long climb we had to stop to catch our breathe before settling down to enjoy the concert.
Then as we and his 20,000 other fans waited in anticipation for Bocelli to take the stage, Vivian chatted with two very attractive young women who happened to be sitting next to her.
We had turned our attention back to the stage when we heard two ushers obviously flirting with our two pretty neighbors.
”Follow us,” we heard one of the ushers say, “and bring your two friends.”
Vivian’s neighbor tapped her on the shoulder. “Come on,”. she said, “they’ve got front row seats for all of us!”
The ushers assumed we were four friends who had come to the concert together, and Vivian and I weren’t about to disabuse them. So down we all went in time to see Bocelli led on stage just a few feet from where we were now sitting.
How was the concert you may ask? Well, to tell you the truth, you haven’t heard Andrea Bocelli sing until you’ve heard him sing at Madison Square Garden from front row seats!
Me and Vivian at the Garden
– Dana Susan Lehrman
Dana Susan LehrmanThis retired librarian loves big city bustle and cozy country weekends, friends and family, good books and theatre, movies and jazz, travel, tennis, Yankee baseball, and writing about life as she sees it on her blog World Thru Brown Eyes!
www.WorldThruBrownEyes.com
What an amazing experience. Who were the women next to you? Why did the usher move them, and you, to the front?
Laurie, the two women sitting next to us were strangers, young and very attractive!
I’m sure that’s why the two young ushers wanted to impress them with those front row seats. Who knows what ensued after the concert!
Very cool, Dana, and it must have been terrific to hear Bocelli sing close up like that. I remember the old Madison Square Garden, when it was really a square, with fondness from seeing the circus there.
Thanx Marian.
Boy do I miss theatre and concerts and movies and ball games and restaurants and life as we knew it!
What fun, Dana! I know that when there are empty seats in front (that have been saved in case celebrities show up), the ushers are told to find beautiful young people from the balconies to fill them. How great that the women next to you were chosen, and that they brought you along!
Yes, and you see how it pays to be friendly to your seatmates!
Great story, Dana, it had me smiling all the way. I wonder whether, instead of the ushers trying to impress these young women, it was *Bocelli* who wanted them in the front row?
When I was in high school, the UN Club sponsored a trip to NYC, and in addition to the UN we attended an afternoon taping of the Merv Griffin Show. We filed in to our seats in the balcony — and then several of us were ushered down to the third row! Apparently they wanted the audience shots to be populated by some folks younger than Merv’s typical audience of fogies!
Thanx John, it’s all great fun!