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It Just Makes Sense to See Greek Concerts in DC April 30, 2007 Let’s get the disclaimers out of the way first, shall we? This article will be more than slightly biased in trying to convince you to see the Dionisiou Brothers concert here in Washington, DC versus anywhere else. We are selling tickets online, but we’re foregoing our usual commission to instead benefit our hosts for the evening, St. Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Church in Falls Church, Virginia, who will be receiving partial proceeds from this show. The fact that this is being hosted at St. Katherine makes this a unique show, because their hall isn’t some 1200 person venue that you’ll find at some hotel in say, Atlantic City or New York City. There simply will be no bad seats at St. Katherine’s Hall that night. But a case can be made that in almost every situation it is better to see a Greek concert in DC than anywhere else. Even in this day and age a Greek concert in this country is rare. There are only a handful of tours that ever come through the United States each year and then they only make stops at some of the larger cities with larger Greek populations like New York and Chicago or to destination spots like Atlantic City. So anytime that a concert actually makes it to the Washington, DC area, it should be treated as a major event if only because when these concerts do well in DC, it encourages other concert promoters to bring other concerts to DC in the future. Detractors of Greek concerts in DC typically cite that we don’t have these large venues or can’t couple a concert with a bad run of luck at a casino. The next closest place to DC that Greek concerts typically come is Atlantic City. But unless you’re a high roller getting comped in the Rain Man suite, getting tickets to a show in Atlantic City is going to be an expensive enterprise. Take a look on the Internet for Dionisiou Brothers tickets in Atlantic City and you’ll find them upwards of $280 or more. What are you really getting for that money? A Greek concert isn’t a multimedia spectacular when extravagant light shows, smoke machines, the performers descending down on wires, twenty back up dancers or anything else that might justify that kind of price. Greek shows are all about the artist and the music and sometimes the live band behind them. So in some respects these smaller venues in DC actually work better for a Greek concert. A more affordable ticket in a smaller venue in DC helps attract your average young adult to these concerts, not just the average young adult's gambling-obsessed parents who get these tickets because they can afford to drop more than your monthly take-home pay in one night. If the act is worth seeing, it’s worth seeing in DC. Save your money, save that trip to Atlantic City for the things you can do there that you can’t do in DC, and save your time in not traveling when the artists are taking the time to travel to you. If you absolutely must make every concert into an “event,” go to a nice restaurant before the show, rent a hotel room, or do whatever it takes to make you feel like you got the most out of your concert-going experience. But the Greek community in DC and in the surrounding areas needs to support these concerts, because the alternative – having to always leave town to see a show – is not something any of us want to consider.
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