All Tatted Up

I feel as though I now have had my fill of the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo for the year. I was able to go from someone feeling somewhat teased and wanting more on Tuesday afternoon to someone feeling completely satisfied today by seeing the full Tattoo show on Tuesday night.

Fortunately, I was able to acquire tickets for half-price by waiting until an hour and a half before the show to buy tickets. It seems that quite a number of senior citizens were taking advantage of the same deal. Actually, once we (Jeannette and I) got into the stadium it became clear that the Tattoo is particularly popular among the grey-haired set. As far as I could tell, almost everyone in attendance seemed to be a member of the grey-haired set. To be fair, there were a few current military types as well as a few families in attendance. Mid-twenties to early-thirties types were particularly rare.

For the most part the show consisted of military themed acts, though there were a few wild card performances scattered throughout the show. These non-military acts really made the experience feel more like some kind of pseudo-circus or variety show rather than a tattoo.

Military or military-style bands from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Belgium performing individually and together made for a fair chunk of the show. Not that I should necessarily venture into the realm of criticism, I will go as far as to say that I thought that the band that performed the least appropriate music and in the least appropriate way was the Royal Band of the Belgian Navy (their use of an electric bass guitar was particularly off-putting, as was the fact that much of their performance took place while they stood in the shape of a heart). The massed band components of the show were pretty neat, particularly the finale when several hundred musicians were playing together.

The wild-card performances were really all over the place. There was a gymnastics/dance group from Estonia that performed a few weird pieces throughout the show. In one instance they performed a number in which 'pirates' were unable to capture treasure because of spirits protecting the treasure (at least that is what I took from the performance). There was also a bicycle team from the Netherlands who rode unicycles. There was a French gymnastics team composed of Parisian firefighters. There was a (excellent) humorous tumbling/trampoline routine performed by policemen from Hamburg. While these acts were pretty entertaining, they tended to feel a little less tattoo-like than some of the drill teams and bands did.

An aspect of the experience that is not explicitly related to show proper but that was particularly amusing was the audience survey that was placed on a limited number of seats in the stadium. Not only did this survey provide us with a sense of the order of acts in the show (which was nice because we didn't have a program), but it also provided us with snappy descriptions of each of the acts. For instance, the RCMP Ceremonial Troop's act was described as "RCMP, bands in red and white uniforms and girls playing spoons." Of course, the best part is that I don't remember girls playing spoons. They describe a performance by a groups from Newfoundland called Ashelin as "Five young girls sing on stools with video of Haiti on screen." And just for kicks, the description of the Juliana Bicycle team's second appearance in the show: "Gymnasts on world's smallest and tallest unicycles."

While I generally found the experience to be overwhelmingly positive, I was a little disappointed that a big deal was made about the fact that cameras were not going permitted in the Metro Centre. Almost as soon as the show started we were informed that many of the performers would be available for photo opportunities after the show, and it was implied that photography of the show was allowed as long as flashes were not used. While it is unlikely that any photos that I might have taken from the upper bowl of the stadium would have turned out well, I am a little disappointed that I didn't at least have the chance to try taking them.

One last thing, if there are 2000 performers (a number suggested on the Tattoo website) and I paid $20 for my ticket then I paid 1 cent per performer, a per performer rate that I don't imagine I will ever get the chance to match again (unless I attend the Tattoo again).

Time to get tatted up

It's once again that time of year in Nova Scotia, the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo is in town.

I attended my first tattoo related performance on June 30 in a nearby grocery store parking lot. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the prominence of the location, I was one of the few people who showed up to see the performance of the pipe band scheduled to play. After a few minutes, once it became clear that they were just going to play Scotland the Brave again and again, I made my way back home. This was a less than overwhelming and endearing concert experience.




Today, I decided to take in another performance. This time the performance was scheduled to take place on the Grand Parade and it was to included appearances by the National Band of the Naval Reserve (Canada) and the Paris Fire Brigade. Soon after Jeannette and I arrived on the scene things began to look amiss. The only performers we saw congregating near the performance area were members of the Naval Reserve band, the firefighters were nowhere to be seen. After about 40 minutes of band content it was clear that the firefighters wouldn't be showing up and that performance would consist entirely of the Naval Reserve band. While the band wasn't bad, they really weren't the reason I made my way downtown in the middle of the day.



I was really hoping to see something like this, or at least this kind of strength turned into a performance:



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I am thinking about attending another lunchtime show on Thursday, though now that I have seen two somewhat disappointing performances I am a little worried that the Thursday trip may not be worth my while. In case you are curious, the act drawing me to Thursday's show is the Juliana Bicycle Team, a group from the Netherlands.

Apparently this is the kind of stuff they do at the main tattoo performances:



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Tonight Jeannette and I are hoping to score some last minute 50% off tickets to the main tattoo performance. The only problem with our plan is that we won't know until just before the show is to start if we have tickets or not. If we don't get tickets tonight we will probably try again tomorrow night. I know it is a little sad, but the firefighters and the bicycle team are really two of the main draws to the full-fledged tattoo performance. I hope they are worth it (or at least worth 50% of regular admission).