Just One More Hit, I Promise i Can Deal With It

This past Tuesday, I scored some tickets to the Kelly Clarkson concert up in Cobb County. Apparently, it’s only the second show in the venue with Annie Lennox being the first. Yeah, I’m still kicking myself for missing that.

For the record, I’m a semi-Kelly fan. I’ve dug most of her releases. Would I have gone if the tickets weren’t a business write-off or really good seats? Eh, probably not. But, I’m glad I did.

The funniest part about getting the tickets was my back and forth IMs with my ninja boss, DG. It went something like this:

DG: I got your tickets for tonight…
ME: Oh to the Miss Independent/Miss Almost Dropped From My Label Tour?
DG: No, that was last year, this year it’s the “Break Away from the Billboard Chart” Tour
ME: I hope she goes in chronological order of her singles and opens with “A Moment Like This”
DG: I doubt it, now is not a moment she wants to remember

Yeah, we can be pretty vicious all jacked up on caffeine. At any rate, Ferg was able to go with me and for business purposes I also roped along RB and AS. Ok, so here’s my thing, if you have to do stuff for business reasons, make sure the people you’re doing it for are actually pretty fun. And, this time around, they definitely were.

As with most concerts, I had my short list of songs that I hoped she would perform. They’re both of the darker and rocker variety, so I knew the chances were really good that she’d do them. And, yeah, she did. The two were “Addicted” and “Walk Away.” And, I have no shame in reporting that I sang along to the former and wiggled it a little bit to the latter.

Ferg, RB and AS however were bouncing up and down every single time Kelly did her little onstage hop. Can we talk about RB knowing every single f’n lyric of every f’n song? I ain’t mad atcha playa, I would have been that way for the Annie show I’m quite sure.

Did I mention we were all pretty buzzed too? Well, we kinda had to be. A) We were in Cobb County B) there were a lot of kids in there and that’s of the under the age of 15 variety and C) there were some pretty killing queens there too. Oh, and a little tip to anyone that is thinking about heading out to a show in Cobb, your choices of shots are pretty limited. There’s Grand Marnier and low level tequila (no Patron) but everything else is just everything chilled or neat.

Umm yeah, three shots of vodka chilled and a Jack Daniels neat for RB, thanks. Just driz-uunk.

I digress, back to the show. Kelly’s wardrobe was a mis-fire as per usual. One outfit the entire show with the exception of the very beginning where she had the signature red gown on from all of “My December’s” promotional material. Underneath she had the outfit she would wear the entire show, a royal blue empire waist top and black slacks. At half time she would throw a black vest over it.

Yeah, boring. Can we get some pretty sparkly things on her please?

The set design was pretty weak too come to think of it. The girl is definitely concentrating on her mega-hits and her personality to carry her from show-to-show. I ain’t mad at her though. Those are her strong points. She really does have this uncanny ability to draw the audience in.

She did most of her chart-toppers and a lot of stuff from the new album – my favorite being “Chivas” a song she claims to have written on a bunch of bar napkins according to the pre-cursor story she told before performing it acoustically.

Wardrobe was a 6.5; Stage Setting also at a 6.5; Song Selection was a solid 10; Crowd banter was a strong 9. At the end of the day, I’m definitely glad I went and was really happy with the crew that I went with.

Now, the afterparty at Swinging Richard’s is a whole other blog…

Mmm, bananas. Ha, Ferg.