~Lame in the Domain
2005-12-29 - 3:00 p.m.

Backdated December 17th, 2005.

So, for those who don't know, there is a tradition in Australia called Carols by Candlelight. Because it's summer over here during Christmas, we get together in the open and have a carols concert, and everyone brings candles to light their music in the audience and sing along. There are lots of local ones - in fact, our local one was on tonights. I haven't been for years...I lost interest for a while in high school, but since then I've usually been busy that night. Tonight, for instance, I had Tim's dad's 50th.

Well, there's a big amphitheatre in Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens called the Sidney Myer Music Bowl...it's something like *thinks* is it the Rockerfeller Centre? That big famous outdoor one in New York or Los Angeles or something, except that most of it is just grass seat-yourself. Every year Melbourne has a huge Carols By Candlelight on Christmas Eve and it has become the biggest one in Australia, even broadcast to some other countries in the area.

Sydney have their own big big one, of course, called Carols in the Domain (because the outdoor amphitheatre is called the something Domain), but it's on a week before Christmas. In fact, it's on right now.

Now, of course I'm supposed to think that the Melbourne one, the one that is the Carols by Candlelight, is better: there's a huge (although not bitter) Sydney-Melbourne rivalry that's been going for over a century, and I sing in the Carols by Candlelight choir. However, every time I see Carols in the Domain, I'm struck by just how tacky it is. Of course, they try, and they have some very good performers on, but it's never as good. Carols by Candlelight is on Christmas Eve, which is a very special atmosphere, but it's not really that. Everything about CBC is better than Carols in the Domain. Yes, CBC is sometimes soppy, but rarely tacky and cheap, it sometimes has some less than wonderful performers, but they'll generally go for quality over popularity. But it's not really the performers who make the difference.

CBC normally has a really warm set, whereas the Domain usually is cold, bland and very open, which makes the performers seem as if they're just out there all on their own. The arrangements are also usually much colder on the Domain and also often in the wrong key for the singers. Nikki Webster was singing Last Christmas a little earlier, she's a young pop star, and it was too low for her really. She could get the notes easily, but she never got a chance to really let loose, because it was always in that no-man's-land kind of area.

Oh my goodness! What a rip-off! they're doing their closer right now and, apart from the fact that they're doing a medley of songs like CBC (whereas they used to sing the incredibly tacky "Reach Out And Touch Somebody's Hand"), they've got that foamy fake-snow stuff flying everywhere, which CBC first did about four years ago.

They had The Hoff singing before. I've never really heard him sing/seen him perform. He was very good, and yet amaaazingly kitch. *giggles* Oh dear, and they spend half their time thanking their commercial sponsors. Ahh well.