Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons Take Their Audience Back to 1962

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons
Pacific Amphitheatre
7/27/16
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons took the stage Wednesday night at the OC Fair’s Pacific Amphitheatre and “”Oh, what a night,” it was. Valli timewarped his audience back to 1962 and lead them through 52 years of Four Seasons hits as well as songs from his solo albums.

From the moment my family and I walked into the venue all you could see was the crowd of baby boomers anxiously anticipating Valli’s arrival on stage.

As soon as 8:30 p.m. rolled around a video introduction began. The video was a timeline that started with a brief clip of the Four Seasons performance of “Sherry” on the Dick Clark Show in 1962 that brought the band their fame. It continued all the way to modern day showing the rise of the behind-the-music musical “Jersey Boys” and Valli’s on going music career as a solo artist.

When the video came to an end the alluring sounds of the iconic trumpets of “Grease” echoed the Amphitheatre as Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons took the stage.

Along with Valli came the roars of the audience singing along to every word to the 1978 film’s theme song . Of all the concerts that I have attended I have never seen a crowd so energetic and in admiration of the performer in front of them.

Even after the audience had taken their seats for the remainder of the show their energy and love for the Four Seasons was still in the air.

From their seats fans were still singing and dancing along to the singer. The audience sitting during the show didn’t come off as lazy or uninterested in the music, but it was out of respect for the music.

Throughout Valli’s set you could tell when someone’s favorite song was being performed because there would be a few people every song who would stand up in the crowd, swaying their body side to side, with their eyes shut tight taking in every ounce of what could possibly be the best night of their life.

Not only were there musical connections between Valli and his fans, but there was also a relationship between them. Every few songs Valli would stop and talk to his fans making jokes here and there.

He even cracked a joke about the elections going on before heading into the Four Seasons song “Harmony, Perfect Harmony.”

“As we know it’s election year. Or is it Comedy Central,” Valli said.

Valli made it a point that he wasn’t trying to make a political statement; he wanted to make sure he got the message across that we should be living in harmony. The crowd roared agreeing to Valli’s statement making the rest of the show even more powerful.

The audience was up on their feet for the remainder of the show as they played the most anticipated songs of the night from “December, 1963” to their closing song “Let’s Hang On (To What We Got).”

During the last leg of the show Valli introduced us to his modern day Four Seasons members. It turns out that three of the four singers are SoCal natives. Brandon and Brian Brigham are brothers from West Covina and Landon Beard is from San Diego. Beard is also a Cal State Fullerton graduate.

So you can say that it is pretty freaking awesome to see fellow SoCal natives, one of them being from the OC, traveling the world with one of the most well respected and iconic musicians out there.

And Valli does not push them off to the side as if they are just back up singers. The same goes for his band. Seeing Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons live you can tell that they are not just a band, but also a family.

Throughout the entire show the performers danced on stage with beams of passion on their faces letting the audience know that they love performing on stage with THE Frankie Valli.

Despite doing these songs for over half a century at this point, the show never felt like a phoned-in performance. Even 82-year-old Valli was dancing as much as he could for the full two hours he performed. And best of all, his signature falsetto never faltered. The band and the audience seemed so overjoyed to be there and that energy radiated throughout the entire night. This goes to show that 52 years later Frankie Valli is still a badass.