"Video Games Live in L.A., 2007"
by Keith Robinson, President, Intellivision Productions
read all of Keith Robinson's blogs on his MySpace page
Friday night, I attended the Video Games Live concert in Los Angeles. The concert, which has been performed all over the world, features a symphony orchestra and choir performing music from some of the most popular video games of all time: Halo, World of Warcraft, Civilization, Zelda, Mario, and many more. There is also a costume competition and video game contests.
The Thursday Los Angeles Times dismissed the concept as "silly," to which I say, "Yeah, what's your point?" It is silly - and lots of fun. To play a giant-screen Space Invaders game, host Tommy Tallarico picked a man from the audience dressed like a giant banana. (Why a banana? "Bananas are under-represented in video games.")
I was invited to be part of the "Meet & Greet," a panel of over two-dozen video game designers and soundtrack composers signing autographs after the show.
The 2006 Video Games Live in Los Angeles was held at the Hollywood Bowl. You can see photos of the event on my blog from last year.
This year's concert was held at the brand new Nokia Theater at the L.A. Live plaza downtown. The theater had only opened 24 hours earlier, kicked off with a concert by the Dixie Chicks and The Eagles.
(Video Games Live was actually supposed to be the first event at the Nokia Theater. From what I was told, after The Eagles were booked to play Saturday and Sunday, they decided they wanted to be the inaugural act at the Nokia, so they added the Thursday night show.)Not all of the bugs had been quite worked out of the Nokia by Friday night. A power failure knocked out the lights on the plaza - and the metal detectors - just before the doors to the theater were to open, causing a delay of ten minutes or so while they rebooted the building. Later, during the Meet & Greet, Event Director Becky Young whispered to me, "There's a leak; we might have to evacuate the theater." Yipes. I assumed gas leak, but it turned out to be water dripping from one of the ceiling light fixtures. Then the fire alarm went off. Heck of a way to run a theater.
Despite this, most of stayed past 1 AM to make sure everyone waiting in line got an autograph; nearly three hours after the concert had ended. Like I said, most. Atari founder Nolan Bushnell left before midnight. Remember that: Intellivision loves you. Atari? Not so much.