Getting off the Metro train and walking the scorching hot streets of D.C heading toward the Verizon center, excitement and anticipation bubbled up in my gay little stomach like a bad meal at Taco Bell–but in a good way. People piled into the venue with their hats, shirts and signs while shady scalpers heckled people on the sidewalk.
There was a moment of freak out because we saw someone standing in a corner holding a sign that said “Elliott Fans Sign Here!” and a group of people huddled over there signing it. Putting this together with the little fact that Elliott wasn’t at the White House this morning had us going into panic mode. Oh hell no. First Katharine McPhee–now Elliott? I’m gonna need a refund. But we went in and one of the ticket scanners told us that Elliott was there. Phew.
We go in, and after a few minutes of random commercials on the screen and walking Pop-Tarts taking pictures with “fans” the show starts. The door opens…Mandisa enters the stage and does a rousing rendition of the diva-queen Whitney Houston’s I’m Every Woman. It’s pretty much the same rendition she gave on the show, and she tried her very best to get the crowd amped as possible but the excitement died down toward the end of the song and into her next If I Were Your Woman.
Ace Young gave us an orgasm-inducing Father Figure was just as good if not better than his original performance, and it was great to hear him sing the entire thing. Except next time I’m gonna need it to be a little less ABC Family and bit more HBO. Thanks. His next song Harder to Breathe by Maroon 5 actually restored what little faith I had in Ace’s full voice–as his falsetto is what always made me love him.
Lisa Tucker comes out and there’s moderate applause. She gives an uninspired rendition of Signed, Sealed, Delivered that couldn’t end soon enough. That was followed by two of Elton John’s best songs Your Song and Someone Saved My Life Tonight in which she accompanied herself on the piano. That shit was a little too wannabe Alicia Keys, and not in a good way. I suppose it was supposed to be impressive, but it was really just boring. I know 12 year olds that can play those tunes.
She introduces her “best friend” Paris Bennett who was one of my faves on Idol, but her set was so incredibly weird. One minute she’s singing Gladys Knight’s Midnight Train To Georgia (which, by the way did not live up to her rendition of it on Idol), the next minute she’s trying to be Beyonce. Like…really trying. Hard. The beginning of her Crazy In Love stint took moves RIGHT from the music video. Yeah, honey–those don’t work in real life. Only in Beyonce music video land. There were so many things jiggling and wriggling I could hardly concentrate on the sub-par vocals. C’mon, Paris. Where’s the Be Without You? Do I Do? Put your little booty-shaking away and just sing something.
Now this is the funniest moment of the night. Bucky comes on stage–and literally hundreds of people got up and left. Not the entire concert I’m sure, but everybody and their Grandma Norma started heading toward the bathrooms and concession stands. Kids near me starting playing “patty cake” and I blurted out “anyone got a deck of cards? I’m in the mood for solitaire.” It was pretty sad. He gave us a lackluster performance of Superstition, some country song that I actually liked until tonight, and then began You’re The One That I Want from Grease. I heard a collective groan. Yes! Kellie Pickler came to save the day. They end their duet and Kellie begins her set.
I’d have to say I liked Kellie’s song picks the best–even though maybe that’s just because she picked songs she sang on the show. Ones she knew that people knew and enjoyed from her. I’m The Only One, Walking After Midnight, and Something To Talk About were the songs Kellie sang and all three were very enjoyable. The best part though, was when she told us a story in between songs about her messing around in the Library of the White House. She said she kept pushing all the books in to see if it would make the shelf turn around to reveal some secret room. Bucky told her she was doing it wrong and tried pulling the books instead. She said she told President Bush and he thought it was funny. Love this girl. Please come back to The View. The Hasselbot’s making me wanna die.
Intermission. A few minutes in we hear slight cheering. We look up on the screen…there’s no one important. The cheering gets louder, and louder, and louder. “What the hell’s going on?” I said. “It’s Elliott’s mom!” my friend yelled over the screaming crowd. Mrs. Yamin herself was strutting the main floor to make her way to to her seat and apparently everyone recognized her. Aww.
There was a really cool thing up on the screen that gave you a number to send text messages to–your message was then displayed on the screen. Of course we had nosebleed seats so we spent most of intermission trying to make out the orange blur that was the phone number. By the time we finally did make it out and sent in “I hate Bucky”, intermission was over and we just payed 30 cents for nothing. Damn.
Chris Daughtry takes the stage and the crowd goes crazy. I’m gonna need to meet this man so I can rub that shiny bald head and faint like a little schoolgirl named Susie. We all kept waivering between rocking back and forth, seizuring, and being stunned by the hottness that was his majesty. He sings Renegade, an excellent Wanted Dead or Alive in which the crowd participated, and then the Prince of Soul Elliott Yamin joins Chris for a duet that put the rest of the Idol match-ups to shame.
I was disappointed Elliott didn’t sing A Song For You which probably would’ve had me in the aisles crying my eyes out but I still enjoyed his set. He sang Moody’s Mood For Love, the song that made America fall in love with him back in the semi-finals, and Elvis Presley’s Trouble. Both of the songs were quite good and I’m all for anything Elliott Yamin but I feel like there could’ve been much better song choices there. And he had a cute hat.
Oh my God. It’s time for Katharine. Jesus Christ. This isn’t just her first time to the stage tonight. It’s her first time to the stage the entire freaking Idol tour. We’re such lucky bastards. All I hear is the “2! 3! 4!” and I start freaking out. “It’s Katharine! AAAAHHH!” You could tell from the crowd reaction as she took the stage to sing KT Tunstall’s Black Horse and the Cherry Tree that her presence was greatly missed. You could also tell from her vocals on the song that her cords were still strained. She was noticeably holding back and at times it was hard to tell if she was even actually singing. But give the girl a break–she had laryngitis AND bronchitis. Despite the okay performance, Katharine finished the song to a crapload of applause and cheers. People just kept going. The cheering didn’t end.
She wiped away tears and thanked everyone for their support as well as apologized for her absence. She explained that this was her first appearance on the Idol tour and that she was actually supposed to be at the Pittsburgh one but her flight from New York (she, like Pickler, also did The View in NYC) got delayed. “We were in the airport for 9 hours!” she says. Katharine tells us that the doctor’s orders are that she can only sing 2 songs, and that the second song will be Somewhere Over The Rainbow (surprise, surprise right?). This song goes much, much better, and her rendition is as beautiful as ever.
Continuing to hold back a little, as she did on The View the earlier day, her acapella “When all the clouds…darken up the skyway, there’s a rainbow highway to be found” still took me out of the crowd and into McHeaven. Katharine’s return was clearly one of the events of the night, and I feel so, so bad for Kat fans that didn’t get to see her on the earlier tour dates. If she hadn’t been there in D.C. I might’ve taken it out on Bucky’s face. Not that there’s much more damage you could do there. Incest puts you in pretty bad shape. At one point I heard a little boy behind me whisper to his parents “I think the doctors told Katharine she was sick but she stayed off longer anyway ’cause she wanted to.” Uhm, you do know I’m a 6 foot tall black man with heavy shoes right little boy? It made me sad actually, to hear that because it just goes to show how much influence parents have over their kids’ opinions. The boy was too young to have that much hatred for anyone. It’s just not something a little boy would think of on his own–it was clearly something he got from his parents, who I heard earlier in the show call Kat a “Diva”. They just kept repeating it “Diva!, Diva!”. Right, and your kid’s the 8 year old?
And now we hear Taylor singing Jailhouse Rock…but we see no Taylor. What the eff? Whoa! Taylor emerges from the elevated seats in the arena surrounded by security guards as he makes his way through the crowd and to the stage to finish a truncated version of the Elvis tune. He wasn’t boring to say the least. If standing seizures and jerk-jerk to the left and the right is your kinda concert, you would’ve enjoyed it. If not…uh…just think of Chris Daughtry and it’ll all be better. Taking It To The Streets was fun and got us dancing around–but it was difficult to enjoy it when there are two eight year olds sitting behind you squealing like pigs who smell bacon frying in the kitchen. “SOUL PATROL! SOUL PATROL!” Dude, I’m gonna “soul patrol” your flimsy little asses into oncoming D.C. traffic if you don’t stuff a sock in it. I have no problem with cheering–as we did our fair share throughout the whole show. But when you sound like a broken dog whistle or Mariah Carey’s ad libs in a bad 90s pop song, there just needs to be a rule against that shit. “Be warned: Annoying cheering will result in submersion into a pit of fire. -God”
The idols came out at the end for a few more songs–we sang, we danced, we waved our arms back and forth. And then the night was over. I still say the best Idol concert performance ever was La Toya London, Jennifer Hudson, Fantasia, and Jon Peter Lewis covering “Hey Ya” a few years back, but hey–what can ya do? The show was fun, and that’s what American Idol is supposed to be. Well worth the 50 bucks even if there was an ugly Laguna Beach wannabe sitting in front of me texting the entire time. Your pimp can wait, sweetie. Chris Daughtry’s singing.
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