I am going to make a somewhat embarrassing admission here: I have this thing for Celtic Women.
I came by it honestly enough. One day I was flipping channels and came across a title on the cable guide that said “Celtic Women,” and I clicked “OK” because I thought it was going to be a show about the Boston Celtics cheerleaders; you know, like the “Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders” show.
Instead I found that it’s not the NBA Celtics at all; it was PBS. And they don't pronounce "Celtic" like "Seltic" but rather "Keltic." It was a pretty over-produced concert of some kind, featuring this full orchestra led by a guy who looks like the geek sidekick to Flo on those Progressive Insurance commercials, three women singers who continually change into elaborate gowns, and this one blond woman who is equally dressed up but just shows up at random moments to run around stage, twirling and skipping and smiling, all the while playing a fiddle – except on PBS it’s called a “violin.” However, the way she plays it is like some of the guys I’ve seen in Cajun’ bands, who can play holding the fiddle at their waist, behind their heads, or even one guy I saw who got bandmates to hold him upside down while he knocked out some Doug Kershaw tune.
Here’s the thing: when I tuned into the “Celtic Woman” – despite there being at least four of them, they go by the singular title ‘woman’ rather than ‘women’ – I thought I’d tuned in for the end of the show. The song, whatever it was, sounded like a grand finale, like the third encore, and everyone was clapping and carrying on and the ladies were smiling and bowing as if whatever they’d just sung made Whitney Houston’s “Star Spangled Banner” seem like a third grade recital of “Mary Had A Little Lamb.”
Only it wasn’t the finale, or the encore, or even close to being the last song of the concert. Turns out, every song these people do is staged like it’s a grand finale. Given that I was only vaguely familiar with most of the songs they were performing – to say they were ‘singing’ doesn’t do it justice – I wasn’t sure if this was like a ‘greatest hits’ concert or this group was like a highbrow Slim Whitman (who, if you were remember the late night TV ads from the 1980s, reportedly sold more albums that Elvis Presley and the Beatles in England). But you never saw an audience so enraptured, so mesmerized, so enthralled, so old and white (except for the occasional small child – usually a little girl – that came along for a night out with grandma and grandpa while mom and dad went to the casino).
And, I have to admit, I got hooked. The staging, the drama, the costumes, the absolutely adoring way the women looked at each other every time one came on the stage as if it was Michael Jordan coming back for one last title run with the Bulls – it was shear PBS genius.
But it was PBS.
Which means, of course, that the orchestra would start up and one of the women would start to sing “Oh Danny Boy” and then a second woman would suddenly come out and the first one would look as if she were so glad to see her, then the blond fiddle player would come skipping around all of them, twirling and bowing and bowing (that’s “bowing” as in bending from the waist and “bowing” as in using a bow to play the violin; aren’t I clever?), and you’d really get caught up in the absolutely swell of orchestration as they got ready to go into the final verse when …
When suddenly these two old crones appeared on the screen, saying, “Aren’t you enjoying this performance of ‘Celtic Woman?’ Aren’t they marvelous? Wouldn’t you like to hear the rest of the song? Well, we’re about $672 dollars short of our pledge amount, so if you pull out your credit card right now and call this number, we’ll get off the screen and let you see the climactic finish of ‘Oh Danny Boy!’ Operators are standing by!’’
I have no idea what the Celtic Woman do for an actual finale or encore. I’ve always heard you don’t pay the kidnappers in a hostage situation because it only encourages them to do it again.
Now, if instead of “Celtic Woman’’ it was “Laker Girls” ….
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