Today we have another delightful guest Author, Sandra Thomas, who attended The Wembley Arena 31st May concert by The Osmonds for their 50th Anniversary World Tour.

Thanks so much Sandra for sharing your experience with us, over to you:

I just had to write to your blog as I am still buzzing from the effects of seeing the Osmonds at Wembley Arena on Saturday!

 

Along with thousands of other (yes, sorry – mainly female) Osmond fans I turned up with my friends with great anticipation and excitement (I couldn’t sleep Friday night as I kept dreaming that Merrill had got me up on stage to sing with him!!).

 

I have been to many concerts at the arena over the years and I am always amazed at how “intimate” the venue feels, despite its capacity. The goose bumps started as soon as the lights went down and when the sound of the “crazy horses” music came on we all jumped to our feet and you knew that “this was it – the night we had been waiting for all our lives”!!

 

We were not disappointed! Every song, every second of that concert made me feel like I was in a time warp and I was a young girl again. Their voices, their smiles, the dancing – everything was perfection. The moving video footage of the old days with their family and the scenes of the screaming fans outside the Rainbow theatre were too much to bear and combined with the music, made a lot of us cry!

 

One of the highlights was when “little” Jimmy Osmond did a roaring rendition of Long Haired Lover from Liverpool – which had the whole crowd on their feet singing their hearts out – fantastic!!

(Admin Note: During ‘LHLFL’, huge bouncy balloons were released over the audience heads, as you can see in the image below, great fun!)

(Photo taken at Cardiff Concert on 28th May during ‘Long Haired Lover from Liverpool’ and supplied by Sue Marshall, Admin of “Osmonds Galore”).

Before the concert, my one worry was that they might have thought it a good idea to get Donny to do some of the lead vocals on the “Osmonds” songs – but with the exception of one of my absolute favourites “Darling” (thanks guys!!) it was actually Merrill who sang them – as it should be!! Not that I don’t love Donny , I do, but for me Merrill will always be “the one” – wow that man can sing!

 

Marie looked and sounded fantastic – I wish her and Donny had sung “Morning Side of The Mountain”, but hey, what they did sing was amazing so I’ll let that one pass.

 

The second half of the concert just blew everyone away as they sang a medley of all the old hits and when they went off the stage at the end, you knew that with the whole crowd chanting “we want the Osmonds” they just had to come back for one more and when they returned to the stage and sang the encore, the tears flowed again and when we had to finally say goodbye, it was like saying goodbye to a dear, lifelong friend who you knew you probably would never see again but who would remain in your heart forever!

 

Thank you Alan, Jay, Wayne, Merrill, Donny, Marie and Jimmy – you have made an old lady very happy!!!

The answer at the moment, from The Osmonds PA’s is that NO there will not be a DVD for sale later for any of the concerts in the 50th Anniversary World Tour. However, you have a couple of alternatives..

First of all you can buy “The Osmonds 50th Anniversary Reunited Live in Las Vegas” DVD – I bought that when it came out and watched it before going to the Cardiff concert on the 28th May.  I highly recommend it and my particular favorite part of this DVD is when all The Osmonds, including their two older brothers Tom and Virl (who are deaf) go on stage with them in the line-up and whilst their brothers (and sister) are singing, Tom and Virl at opposite ends of the line-up sign the words to the song, that is lovely and I have to admit bought a tear to my eye because as we all know, the whole reason we even got The Osmonds was because they started to perform to raise money for hearing aids and so their brothers could go on their Mormon Missions.

Available now and possibly for a limited time, certainly via membership of donny.com you can buy, for $9.95 a “Pay Per View” of a live recording of the Wembley Arena concert, taped on Friday 30th May.

Go onto the store at donny.com and purchase your Pay Per View, then when you want to watch it, simply click on VIEW in your member area, please be aware though that once you click VIEW you then have 4 hours only to watch it, so make sure you have allotted a couple of hours where you know you will not be interrupted.  This recording was made by Jeremy Hall, official photographer for the UK part of the World Tour.  During filming for the Pay Per View, Jeremy even went on stage with The Osmonds.

Jeremy will be producing a photographic book (with blog style commentary) after the Tour finishes, no estimated date for completion yet.  He has been giving sneak peeks of his work on his site Osmondmania.com.  If you want to get a copy of that then also on donny.com a pre-sale for the book started this week.  Doing a pre-sale means they get a good idea of how many print runs to do of the book later and of course it means you won’t miss out on this fantastic book which I know is going to provide so many wonderful memories of a great tour.

If you know you would like both the Pay Per View (PPV) and the book and you like a bargain, then you can buy from the store a special deal of the book and PPV with about $5 off the PPV.

I have not had the chance yet to watch the PPV so I am sorry, I can’t give any recommendations on that score.