Everyone likes a band who have a fancy stage trick.
Musicians wouldn't pretend to be anything but what they were: no fancy stage clothes, no show-biz facades, no posturing.
Without any fancy stage tricks, the nymphs kneel by an imaginary stream to splash their faces, and some of the swains strip off their shirts to bathe their chests.
A fancy stage set with plenty of special effects make Up in Smoke a classic rock 'n' roll event, and the slamming hip-hop beats of its stars make it totally 21st century.
All this history is conveyed in a ninety-minute speech during which Armstrong changes out of his fancy stage clothes and into casual ones, takes apart and packs up his horn, plays some records, and speaks a few thoughts into a tape recorder.
It's an approach that appeals to some producers because it allows them to sell high-priced tickets to more choice seats, or to use the old pit space for bigger and fancier stage sets — and because technology means they can.
Pierrefonds, at the top of a hill on the southern end of the forest, is a flight-of-fancy stage set, designed on the orders of Napoléon III by the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in the early 19th century on the foundations of a medieval fortress.
It was a billion dollar plus bet being placed on a team that is currently not worthy of the Dome they now call home -- much less the league's fanciest stage.
If even one proton fades, a sensor will send out an alarm confirming that matter is, as Mr. Ferris says, "only a passing fancy, a stage in the ongoing dance of energy".
It eschews fancy later stage grandstanding in favor of the undervalued treasure.
