The Great American Idol Adventure

For some inexplicable reason, my (former) roommates Rachel and Allison and I spent pretty much all of our spring semester this past year watching season 9 of American Idol. I always watch the initial audition episodes because they're hilarious, but haven't actually watched the rest of the show aside from the seasons Taylor Hicks and Carrie Underwood won. It's just too time-consuming. Or so I thought.

And yet every Tuesday/Wednesday night, there we were, in our living room screaming at Tim Urban to grow some talent or GTFO and swooning over Crystal/Casey. Naturally, we decided one of the last things the three of us should do before splitting off to different parts of the country was to go see the AI live concert in Albany. Tickets were bought, schedules were adjusted and the date was set.

Around 3:00PM yesterday, we piled into Allison's car and headed down the road. The weather there was clear and hot. New York State is unbelievably gorgeous, especially the further upstate one travels. To New Yorkers in the City area, "upstate" means anything not in the immediate vicinity of NYC. But the real upstate is the part we drove through to get to Albany and it is full of breathtaking views of hills and valleys and rivers. I am still amused that the majority of people I run into outside of the New York/New England area seem to think that NY State is nothing but miles and miles of city and concrete. For months after I moved to Syracuse, people from high school would ask me how "the city" was and I'd have to explain to them that I wouldn't know--considering it's 5 hours away. New York has far more to offer than that one small area everyone around the world knows and loves, and it's actually a real shame that so many people don't realize that.

Anyway, enough waxing poetic about nature. We arrived at the venue around 5:30 and located the box office to pick up our tickets after parking. Due to a super odd set up, the tour buses were parked right next to the box office and they used that as an entrance for the performers/crew. This resulted in us getting asked rather rudely to leave while we were trying to look at the venue seating map to figure out where our seats were. Once outside, we noticed people were crowding around the fencing that had been set up around the buses. Figuring it might be more fun to stick around and try to get some autographs to sell online cherish and treasure forever and ever than risk getting accosted by someone in a hideous bee costume at the venue's entrance, we stuck around. And it was well worth it, because out came Casey James in all his Texan deliciousness.

We watched him get screamed at and fawned over from a safe distance, then decided if we (meaning I, of course) wanted any kind of contact it would be best to mosey over there. And we did, just in time to watch some woman old enough to be his mother accost him with a picture she'd printed off the internet of him in his HOUSE. She was positively glowing that it had startled him so much, but lady? If the poor man looks like a deer in headlights it's probably because you are creeping him the fuck out. He left after that, to much disappointment and pouting from me.

But then the winner, Lee DeWyze came out, and all was well and good. We ended up on the complete other end of the fencing, smooshed against some horrendous Stage Mom and her daughter who I will forever refer to as Pouty Face. You know those girls who think that walking around with a perpetual pouty face makes them look super hot? Yeahhh. More makeup caked on than a 1980's hooker and a loud-mouthed mother who actually attempted to squeeze me out of my space at the fencing despite like 5 feet of clear space to their right. I was content to bide the time waiting for him to make his way back around by drawing a zombie cat but we realized he probably wouldn't be coming back and headed over.

I got my picture, and then an autograph. As he was signing, I told him kudos for being super talented and he looked at me strange then said I looked familiar.

"Do you follow me on Twitter?" He asked.

"Um, yes. I think I do!" I responded.

Well, that was a lie. I wasn't sure if I did, and you know how in the moment when something is happening, like a pseudo-celebrity saying you look familiar, and you just want to rush to agree or respond or whatever? Yeahhhhh. So, sorry, Lee DeWyze of American Idol. I lied to you. But I follow him now. That makes up for it, right?


Mmm, delicious guitarist posterior.


How sweet.

So, that was fun. He left and it was getting close to show time so we headed in and found our seats. The show itself was rather interesting. Putting ten performers with vastly different styles together in one concert has all the makings of a super train wreck. Long concert was hella LONG! And the audience was the most passive I've ever encountered. Every concert I've ever been to was brimming with audience energy, with the standing and the clapping and the dancing/screaming. This one? Not so much. Not so much at ALL.

Didi Benami performed first and reminded me how much I really, really love her voice. It's so unique. If she ends up releasing an album I will probably buy it. Hopefully she can have some sort of career beyond the Idol stuff. I understand why she was kicked off early based on the show's usual requirements, but I think anywhere else she would have held her own for a lot longer than the 10th spot.

Andrew Garcia did his usual thing covering "Straight Up" and "Sunday Morning". I had to explain to Allison why I was laughing so much when he started the second song: it always reminds me of sophomore year when Terrell and I had just started dating and still lived in the dorms. We both had roommates, so it was rare to get any alone time for *ahem* alone stuff. Sunday mornings were our one time to be together completely uninterrupted because my roommate would go to church really early. Now every time I hear that song it reminds me of sexytime and thus, I lol.

I can't remember the exact order everyone performed in. I know that Tim Urban came out and destroyed two songs I love. It's such an utter travesty that he made it into the top 10 because that boy cannot sing to save his life. He seems like a genuinely nice, friendly person who would probably save puppies from fires and make soup for the homeless and stuff like that, but every time I have to hear him butcher Coldplay and the Goo Goo Dolls I can only think about my desire to physically remove his vocal chords and throw them into a boiling pit of lava. He was so bad that Rachel went out during his set to see if she could win a prize doing pull-ups for the Marines (she won a lanyard).

Katie is an amazing singer, but whoever was in charge of designing the accompanying graphic displays for her set needs to be fired. They went with a comic book theme, which is weird enough for such a normal all-American girl, but then amped it up for her cover of "Fighter" by displaying the lyrics in comic book POW! format for nearly every. single. word. And sounds! "Dah-dah-dah-dah" should never be up for display anywhere unless it's kareoke night. Some examples (sorry for the crap images, my camera decided to completely keel over right as the concert started and I had to use my phone instead):



The designer for Siobhan's set, on the other hand, deserves an award. She shocked the socks off of all the parents and small children in the audience with a cover of "Paint It Black" complimented with dark colour themes and intense strobe light action. It was incredible, and up to that point the most worthwhile part of the show. She's someone I would definitely go see again. Allison is convinced she should go to Broadway and play Elphaba in Wicked (and I'm inclined to agree).

Immediately following was sweet little Aaron and his put-me-to-sleep-why-don't-you country music. Kid will have a future, just not anywhere near my ipod... it was quite a jolting contrast to have him follow directly after Siobhan nearly put us all into epileptic shock with her finale.

And then there was Casey, and all was good and sexy. I turned to Allison at one point and tried to explain my strange infatuation:

Me: "All musicians just ooze sex. It's what they do. Except the hairy ones."

Allison: "And Gwar."

Right, Gwar... while they may indeed ooze something, sex appeal probably isn't it.



(The answer, of course, is awesomeness. And fake blood.)

Crystal and Lee were, of course, incredible. Both would have been deserving of the win, though I'm still semi-surprised after all this time that it was Lee. I guess when you take into account the fan girls it makes sense, but she was such a clear-cut favourite from the start. Oh well, they're both hopefully going to have real careers beyond all of this. After Lee's set finished they did a group sing finale thing and then it was done.

All in all, a fairly nice time. Not the best concert I've ever been to by far, but again I'll cite the difficulty in throwing a group of 10 vastly different performers together for one huge long show. Most people were there for probably one or two people at most, and it's hard to build enthusiasm and excitement from people who don't really care about 2/3 of the show. I do feel rather bad, especially for the earlier performers because the audience enthusiasm was pretty much at zero then, and that has got to get you down somewhat. But hopefully some of them will go on to play venues full of people there to see them and only them.

The whole experience really got me thinking about fame and pop music in general. I grew up in the era of 90's boy band fever and was a gigantic fan of The Backstreet Boys. I remember being so excited and enthusiastic, hopeful that maybe if I could just look into the eyes of one famous person they would see me and I would be touched by fame. The desire for fame and celebrity, either to have it or to be touched by it, is a huge thing in our culture and I think a lot of people simply take it at face value rather than digging deep into the subconscious reasons for it. All of this musing has renewed my interest in doing real actual scholarly research on this topic because at the end of the day it still fascinates me; it always has.

I can remember performing full concerts in my bedroom to Britney and BSB cds, pretending I was in front of a crowd of thousands. I never got into the whole hairbrush as a mic thing, instead I simply pretended one was in my hand. It was tragically embarrassing, and I am so thankful that god didn't invent youtube until I was old enough to know better.

Though I don't want to be famous any more, not by a long shot, I can still feel that undercurrent tingle of wanting to be touched by fame - wanting to be on the inside of things rather than the outside looking wishfully in. This is something I think almost everyone feels at one point or another. It flares up more at times when you actually do brush up against fame, like my thirty seconds of blabbering to Lee about following him on Twitter. In truth, he's not actually any different than me except that he happens to be so good at what he does people follow him and come from miles to see him do it.

I hope in my lifetime to become good enough at what I do that people recognize it. I'd love to have book signings and know people read what I write and maybe even love me for it. But I am realistic enough to realize fame is not something I want nor need. I'm too odd of a person to have every second of my life analyzed. And really, who would want to? Except maybe some kind of documentary maker doing a piece on insanity or really weird people.

Then I'd be the perfect subject.

Anyway... to end this epic concert post, I'll just say that something out there didn't like the fact that we attended the concert. The way home was full of hail, lightning of epic proportions, and crazy rain. But we did make it home, eventually, and there was True Blood and rejoicing the next day.

Which is technically when this post was written. Actually, not really. I wrote it on Monday because I am supremely lazy and forgetful and also, did I mention True Blood? Yeah. Thank blogger for enabling post backdating!