Nina, Pablo and Emilio joined me at the McSwain Theatre on Saturday night for a performance by the Beatles Tribute band: "Britain's Finest." Emilio and I have seen the Beatles Tribute band "1964" perform two times, once at the McSwain with Mari and once in Norman when he was five, but this was the first time Nina and Pablo had seen a "Beatles" performance. Earlier this year, we bought Pablo a portable CD-Player, and he has been wearing out his Beatles CDs, Nina loves her "Glee Sings the Beatles" soundtrack, and Emilio's Beatles-bona-fides are well established at emiliosdad.blogspot.com (see this, this, and this). This past week, I went online to find a sample "Britain's Finest" setlist and made a CD mix to match. We listened to it multiple times on our way to and from Texas over the last few days, so by the time we arrived for the concert, our foursome knew most of the words of the songs we'd hear.
We knew we had tickets on the first row. What we didn't know is that we'd be sitting next to Mrs. Nelson, who was Emi, Nina, and Pablo's second-grade teacher at Hayes. They were almost as excited to see her as they were to see the band. Pablo joined in enthusiastically in all the sing-along moments.
Unlike "1964," "Britain's Finest" goes through multiple costume changes in order to make it all the way through the Beatles canon.
Pablo said his favorite performance of the night was "I Saw Her Standing There;" Nina voted for "I Feel Fine;" and Emilio liked "Yesterday" the best. After the show, the woman sitting beside Emilio told me that he had a beautiful voice, and she noted that he knew the words to every song.
