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... by Joanne Corsano ... joanne@picturelake.com

Guitars
click thumbnail to see a photo gallery
of the concert

Stephen Murray (John Lennon), Joselito Ybanez (Paul McCartney), Rob Murray (George Harrison), Rich Rapino (Ringo Starr).

Lucky me, I got to see Studio Two, the Beatles Tribute, three times in the month of August. The same four lads performed as on the night before at Rockland High School, and performed a similar set, with one exception. Stephen Murray ("John") had asked me at Rockland if I had any requests, and what do you know, I actually thought of one, the somewhat obscure and vocally complex "Paperback Writer." So, to my delight they performed that melodic ode to an aspiring novelist at this performance (and it sounded mighty fine!). Take a look at the pictures and you'll see one of the set list, which gives an idea of the songs they played, although it might not be exact.

It was another solid performance from these four talented lads, but this venue that I've taken to calling the Bank Vault is far from the best place to see a show. It's evident that the complex focuses more on the visual arts. For one thing, sound isn't the best here, loud and echoey.

Lighting also isn't very good. There isn't much stage light to begin with, and what there is is pointed in such a way that half the performance area is in darkness (where Paul was), and there is a lighted area off beyond stage left (where nobody was). I don't understand why somebody doesn't get up on a ladder and move lighting around to illuminate the whole performance area. I noticed this when I saw Zoë Lewis here a few weeks ago; when she was at the piano at stage right she was basically in darkness and was only illuminated when she came out from behind the piano to play guitar.

Now we get to the other big problem. They had a big open area in front of the performance area set up for dancing, so for more than half of the show while people were up dancing, most of the rest of the audience couldn't see the band, at all. With a room this size, there is absolutely no reason a dance area couldn't be set up to the side of the performance area, so that people who wanted to dance could do so without blocking the view for people who had come to watch this very visual band. It seems extremely disrespectful to the performers to have the dance area set up this way.

Thanks go to Stephen ("John Lennon") for reserving us two seats at the end of the first row close to the performance area where we could see around the dancers and actually had a decent view of the band. I only got a few pictures, but as I had gotten a gaggle of good ones the night before at Rockland that didn't worry me. These four guys do a groovy job bringing those early Beatles tunes to life!

Here is a page with a handy list of links to all pages on this website with content relating to Studio Two.