Raja - Live in Concerts - Madurai Concert Telecast/Videos

[Kimrep]

went to the NJ concert. venue was very good, it was great to see the crowd building up before the concert, there was awesome sense of excitement/anticipation in the crowd, felt like being in a close family function.


there was delay, concert started at 7PM. "NJV" , based on your posts, I am assuming you were the person on the stage before the concert with the lady in blue sarree, you did a good job, cant say the same for your co-host


the concert started with an instrumental piece raaja said was composed for this tour and then it was janani janani, I get goosebumps just typing that up, it was surreal seeing him. just that was worth going to the concert.


Did not want to start the post with a negative tone, but there were issues. while i didnt have great seats on the floor like some other posters seemed to have had, i did have decent seat ($100) on the lower level about 20-30 rows above the floor almost in straight line from the stage. when i walked in, i was bracing myself for awesome sound. But when the concert started, it was like music out of a boombox. It was very very frustrating, it sounded like just speakers up front near the stage were on, I don't know how they setup sound for rock concerts which must happen at this venue but if it was this way people would ask for money back. it was as if no rehearsal was performed earlier to test the sound. I am not technical enough to explain what was wrong, but there definitely was not enough bass, couldnt hear the chorus, it was tough to hear Ramya's voice in saindhu sanduh etc,.. it went on like this for nearly half the concert, by the time they hit Sundhari kannal oru seidhi everything seemed to have been taken care of, it sounded great except they cut off Chitra's mic right after an interlude for a couple .


Good:
Vanitha mani was pleasant surprise, was great
Raaja, at least at the beginning was in good mood, was having fun singing.
As always, SPB, Chitra, Mano and Karthik, for that matter all singers (except one) were very good
thamthana thamthana had a new arrangement was very good. IR said it was done specifically for the tour as well. crowd asked for a repeat, mano was stand-in MC and didnt really get what was requested
there was very little random speechifying on stage, once the music started it was all about music for good portion of the first half
Raaja appreciated the telugu version of the lyrics for maasi maasam, whatever people say about him not appreciating wordings is not accurate
At one point SPB said, "I have been asking him to do tours for a while, i am glad he has finally started". Raaja said that he would like to but it takes a lot of effort and despite everything they do, mistakes happen on stage and every time that happens he feels thousand pin pricks. He was very honest (as always) and humble about it, felt like he gets demotivated by it.
He credited Karthik (raaja) for helping him with arrangements for thendral vanthu (again, this was another song that got messed up by sound where i was sitting) and several other songs
there were lot more good stuff like these


not so good:
He did lecture the crowd at one point when there were repeated requests. he even implied that it was disrespectful. I think his point was that they have prepared several good songs and it will not be fair to just play something without preparing ahead...
Karthik was heavily under utilized.
Songs were great for rabid fans like us, but some more peppy songs would have worked the crowd better.
Dont think he can handle multilingual audiance, would be nice if he just let SPB take over tamil/telugu mix of song selection and addressing the crowd in english. I think telugu fans felt a little let down.
Yuvan, Karthik raja and karthik attempted an impromptu (at least it felt that way) rendition of "roading mele" it didnt work very well




Bad:
There was a clear sigh ("ayyoo..") in the section of crowd where I was every time Bavatharini was asked to sing, clearly the weakest singer.
Sound




Overall it was well worth it. Hope he does this again, but I doubt he will.