American Idol winner Kris Allen came to town. Kinda cool – he’s supporting the USO, and he gave a performance in our small community in the Netherlands – for free – to support servicemen and women and their families. I have 3 things to say about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part 1: Lesson learned – I should have realized this – when you’re recording LOUD live music, a better microphone isn’t necessarily…well, better. Thinking (correctly) that Mr. Allen would be OK with me recording some of his show, I brought along my Rode Videomic<\/a>, which can catch a whisper from 20 feet away. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Probably not your ideal equipment to record a stack of speakers blaring music. I’m not sure if using earbuds to monitor from the headphone jack would have caught the extreme distortion that occurred throughout the louder parts. It probably depends on how my camera is set up. But needless to say, some experimentation will occur in the near future. So as a result, I hate to disappoint the Kris Allen fans I was talking to on Twitter – I had no problem recording video, but most of it is a mess. Because I know there are fans out there who may appreciate it regardless, I ended up making a kind of “sampler” which gives an idea of his performance. I hope you find it worthwhile; apologies in advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Part 2: I learned a little bit about the communities that inhabit the Twitter world. Just on a lark, I tweeted that I was going to see Chris (misspelled) Allen, and within the hour I was exchanging tweets with folks who were intensely interested in what Mr. Allen was up to at my kids’ school. I’m not a huge fan, but it’s nice to see how folks with similar interests can use technology and twitter to keep up with the latest happenings on their, uh, Idol (sorry for the pun). They were able to vicariously share in the event, as by the end they had gotten to see photos<\/a>, hear updates, and even see the setlist<\/a>. And I found myself on a Twitter list<\/a> with others at the (small) show, all talking about the same thing. Thanks to @krinjalists<\/a> and others for teaching me a thing or two about social media today!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Part 3: Truly impressed by the effort Kris Allen made to share with our community. He probably doesn’t realize that it was not only American military personnel for whom he performed; the US community is actually a support community for the NATO base where many of us work. And a lot of their kids attend the school where he performed. So he had a truly international community there who was able to see the kinds of things our USO does for us. And not only did he perform music, he spent the afternoon at the school – my daughter says he was spotted singing with the choir, and he hung around for quite awhile after the show signing autographs and shaking hands with his adoring – mostly younger – fans. A real class act!<\/p>\n\n\n\n And to finish it up, here’s the video:<\/p>\n\n\n\n