Boston is home to some great venues to see a concert.  One of my favorites is the Orpheum Theatre on the edge of Boston Common.  The Orpheum is an old theater built in 1852 after the style of an opera house.  Originally called the Music Hall, it was home to the New England Conservatory and the Boston Symphony Orchestra who made their debut there in 1881.  The BSO called it their home until 1900 after which they built their own hall, Symphony Hall, where they still play today. The Orpheum has played host to many illustrious composers and speakers.  Tchaikovsky premiered his First Piano Concerto there.  Civil rights activist Booker T. Washington and author Ralph Waldo Emerson both gave noted lectures to its audiences.  In later years, the theater went through conversions which changed it from a music hall, to a vaudeville hall, and then to a movie house, until being converted back into a music hall in 1968.  The theater has seen many renovations and even the closure of two of its original entrances, leaving only the back alley entrance through Hamilton Street.

It can be a little tricky finding parking for the Orpheum due to the narrow, one-way streets that comprise the neighborhoods surrounding the auditorium.  Even the roads around Boston Common itself form a large figure eight where most sections only run in one direction. The parking garage below Boston Common is reachable only through a bisecting road and its reduced height clearance won’t accommodate many SUV’s, including mine.  Metered parking around the Common is rare, so the few parking lots and garages in the area can fill rapidly on concert nights and weekends.  Fortunately, Boston has a pretty reliable public transportation system and there’s a train stop within a hundred yards of the Orpheum itself.  However in typical Boston fashion, the trains stop running at 1:00am, fully one hour before closing time for bars and nightclubs.

Even after successfully navigating either the streets around Boston Common, Beacon Hill, Downtown Crossing, and the Theater District; or the train system beneath all four; you’ll need a little first-hand knowledge to locate the Orpheum itself.  As I wrote earlier, the entrance is located down an alleyway and there’s no sign for it visible from anywhere other than when standing in the alley itself.  Depending on the size of the show and type of music, I suppose The Orpheum could be located by following the throngs of similarly dressed concert-goers; however, with the Theater District in close proximity, this may result in a futile effort.  Your best bet toward finding the Orpheum is to locate the corner of Boston Common where the train station exits and you’ll find yourself at the end of Hamilton Street.

Aside from other concert-goers and prerequisite ticket scalpers, you’ll be surprised to find the tour buses for the bands parked right in the alley. Although I have yet to see a band actually exit the adjacent building into the buses, after each show a dozen or so fans can be found loitering around them for a glimpse or an autograph.  Once inside the Orpheum, the building’s charm is evident in the small artistic flourishes that adorn the architecture. Whereas a modern rock arena is usually comprised of steel girders, concrete pillars, and fluorescent lighting, this concert hall is adorned with classic columns, gilded arches, ceiling murals, carpeted flooring, and wall sconces.  Not to take anything away from the skilled construction crews who efficiently assemble today’s stronger, sturdier, safer buildings, but I would like to see some of that efficiency result in more time for artisans to contribute aesthetics.

The seating for the Orpheum is separated into two levels: the orchestra level and the balcony level.  Although technically, the Orpheum also includes a mezzanine section, it’s really just the first five rows of the balcony, separated from the rest by a walkway.  Since this walkway is the main conduit for everyone in the balcony to take to get to the concession counters and the bathrooms downstairs, it’s important to note that the view from the first row of the mezzanine is substantially better than the first row of the balcony.  Regardless, I’d still take most rows in the balcony over the back rows of the orchestra, which are marginally obstructed by the balcony itself as it hangs over the auditorium.  Aside from the aforementioned sections, there are six opera boxes on each side of the auditorium, jutting out from the side walls which remind me of the boxes where the old guys from the Muppet Show would heckle the cast and close the show.

Although I had sat in nearly every corner of the Orpheum over the years, I had never managed tickets to opera boxes until Christmas 2004.  That year, for her birthday, I decided to surprise Maggie with tickets to see the Barenaked Ladies at the Orpheum.  We had both seen BNL in concert before we had met, but hadn’t yet seen them together.  I waited until tickets went on sale through Ticketmaster and repeatedly scanned for the best seats available.  I finally found a pair of seats in the orchestra section about halfway back, unobstructed by the balcony.  Tickets were going fast and I had already turned down a pair two rows in front of these seats, in the hope that a better pair would turn up, so I bought them. After completing the credit card transaction, I had the nagging feeling that I shouldn’t have given up so easily.  I logged back into Ticketmaster and continued searching when after about the fourth search, I found what I was looking for: two tickets, Mezzanine, squarely in one of the Muppets boxes.  I had to recheck the map a couple of times to confirm that I wasn’t mistaken, but that’s exactly where they were.  A whir of key presses and a few clicks later and I had bought a second pair of tickets to the same show, thinking I’d just sell the first set of tickets online.

Several weeks passed and my tickets hadn’t arrived - not the Muppets box tickets nor the plain old, ordinary, not too bad orchestra seats.  Eventually, even Maggie’s birthday arrived and still no tickets.  I resorted to putting a copy of the invoice in a card along with a story about how the tickets would eventually arrive, probably about a week before the show.  I even told her about the second set of tickets and a friend from her work was very excited to take them off our hands, which was good since it was doubtful that they would arrive in time to sell on EBay.  Then another couple weeks passed, but still no tickets.  When the tickets still hadn’t arrived by the Monday before the show, I called Ticketmaster and explained that I hadn’t received them.  The customer service rep was very nice but unable to determine whether or not the tickets were mailed, so she arranged for me to appear at the ticket window with a picture ID.  Then, two days before the show the tickets finally arrived in the mail.  I separated the two pairs and Maggie gave the plain old, ordinary, not too bad orchestra seats to her friend at work.

On the evening of the concert, Maggie and I had dinner at home before heading in town.  Traffic wasn’t too bad and I navigated the narrow streets of Boston like a seasoned pro until I arrived at our “secret” parking lot tucked down one of the side streets, out of view of all the major access points.  We had only a short walk to the Orpheum from the lot and arrived with time to spare.  I handed one of the people at the door our tickets, but her scanner let out an off-key tone during scanning.  She tried scanning the ticket again before summarily declaring that it had been cancelled.  At once I realized that after my phone call to Ticketmaster, they had cancelled the tickets, so the attendant directed us to the pickup window for the replacements.  I presented my license and received four replacement tickets, including two for the ones we had previously given to Maggie’s friends!  Maggie and I hadn’t made arrangements to meet them before the show and we didn’t know how we would get in touch.  We had just started to walk back out to decide our next move when as luck would have it Maggie spotted the two of them grimly waiting for the next customer service window. They had already tried to enter as we had and were similarly denied.  I presented them with the valid tickets and shared a laugh over a couple Harpoon drafts inside.

When the lights flickered to indicate that the main show was going to soon start, we made our goodbyes and went our separate ways.  As Maggie and I made our way up to the Muppets box, we had to pass through several security checks until we could take our seats.  The box required more security than would have been needed for the plain old, ordinary, not too bad orchestra seats which added to the VIP feelings we both had.  From our booth, we had a great view of the whole auditorium from our perch over the stage.  “Great seats, huh?” I asked and pointed out Maggie’s friends sitting in the seats we would have gladly taken if I hadn’t felt the urge to keep looking.  The show was great but even more so because from our seats perched over the stage, we felt like BNL was playing just for us. Several times, Ed Robertson looked up at us in our box and gave us a sly smile.  I imagine he thought to himself, “Those boxes remind me of the old guys from the Muppet Show.  What the heck were their names?” They were Statler and Waldorf, Ed.  And thanks for the great show.

"Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life."
John F. Kennedy