Last night I had the distinct pleasure of going to see Lily Allen perform at the Roseland Ballroom. I say distinct pleasure because the whole thing was a really fun time.
I was pleasantly surprised by Lily’s opening act, Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head. I didn’t expect much. With a retarded name that screams for attention, I didn’t really expect them to offer much. Thankfully, they delivered a high energy performance with danceable, electro beats that made me quickly look past the name. Some of the songs sound like the love child of the straight version of the Scissors Sisters and a John Hughes movie - in the best way possible. I particularly enjoyed how fun and carefree their songs were. (Sophisticated Side Ponytail anyone?) They were just having a good time - a welcome change from many of the emo-indie bands I’ve been trying to ignore for the past few years. I’m definitely going to check them out next time they come to town.
Now, onto Lily. She’s great. The whole thing felt like you were hanging out at a party where your friend Lily set up a little stage and performed for everyone. Her stage presence is self-deprecating yet totally confident. I didn’t expect her to be able to sing so well live. She sang every song without fault. This is particularly impressive when you take into consideration that homegirl smoked cigarettes and drank wine the ENTIRE time. There was no trace of the unprofessionalism that Perez Hilton often refers to. Sure, she was drinking and smoking but she delivered an awesome show that everyone enjoyed. No harm, no foul. If you can do anything just as good or better drunk, you should.
Her stories and explanations of songs before she sang them were great. Did you know the song Chinese is about missing her mom, not a boy? Here’s a cute video of her telling the crowd to light up in celebration of 4-20 and slightly admonishing an overly amorous couple in the front row.
Oh, and did I mention there was a food eating competition halfway through the show? Good times.
Photos and video courtesy of friend, blogger and NSG reader Annie. Thanks! *smooch*
As you all should know by now, I went to see the Circus Starring Britney Spears on Friday at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ. It was AMAZING!!! As you can see from the picture above, my seats were good but not great. We were 22 rows back on the right side of the stage. I was worried about the whole “theatre in the round” thing but they did a really great job of keeping all sides involved. The arena, despite being off the PATH train in Newark, is a really good space. Lots of bathrooms, comfortable seats, good concessions. I’ve got a lot to say about the show so, please, read on…
PCD: The Pussycat Dolls were the opening act. They was aight. They were an appropriate act to open up for Britney. I only have two real complaints about their act. First, their group dancing was NOT in sync. I expect my female pop groups to dance together…especially when they are all lipsynching. You really only noticed that they were off the few times all five of them came together at the same time on the same spot on the stage. My second complaint has to do with their introduction of Britney. Nicole Whateverherlastnameis introduced Britney as the original Pussycat Doll. WRONG! Britney is the original Britney. It’s blasphemous to compare the two. Shut your trap and get off the stage.
Opening: Britney’s show was kicked off by some weird video clip starring Perez Hilton as a Queen Elizabeth/Master of Ceremony type character. When he first mentioned it on his site, I thought he was just IN the video. Wrong, he IS the video. It’s all him. And it’s long. I was so super excited to see my first ever glimpse of Britney live and I gotta say he kinda ruined it for me. Imagine, you have anticpation, then intense anticipation, the screen turns on and you start to wiggle and scream, then you have three minutes of Perez Hilton’s ugly face in a weird ass wig yelling at you about the freakshow/circus about to start during which you stop screaming and jumping and just start thinking “What the fuck is this shit?”, then as you are thinking that thought Britney is lowered onto the stage. Can you see how this took away from the moment I’ve been looking forward to for two months straight? I wonder why they chose him to open the show. Could it have been because we all know he won’t bad mouth anything he’s involved with? Whatevs…moving on.
Britney: Britney is back, b!tches! She was amazing. Her body was amazing. No, she does not sing live, but she dances her ass off in the way that made her a star. I read one review that said she did more walking across the stage than anything else. She did do a lot of walking but she was playing to a 360 degree audience on a huge stage. Plus, all of her “walking” was highly stylized, choreographed and done in 5 inch stilettos. (Her shoes in the show were fierce.) I was really impressed with how much she had to do in the show. There were acrobatics, lots of props and a ton of set pieces. At one point in the show, she saddled two guys hanging from ropes and then let them lift her into the air where she was transferred into one of the guys arms, spun around and then set back down on the stage. She did this all without rigging or safety lines and she looked totally comfortable. Let’s see Madonna let anyone lift her up in the air 30 feet without strapping herself in.
Costumes: I was worried that the costumes would look like crap because that’s what they looked like in all of the pictures from other shows. I am very happy to report that this was not the case in person. The costumes are stage costumes and they all looked amazing from the audience. Nothing was tacky. I want to be skinny enough to wear the cop costume from the Womanizer encore for Halloween next year.
Highlights: There were so many great moments from the show. The Bollywood version of Me Against The Music was fierce. I was also pleasantly surprised that she sang Everytime since it wasn’t on the original set list. The Breathe On Me/Touch of My Hands sequence was sex on a platter. During Do Something you could really tell how much she genuinely loves that song. She was “on” for the whole show but you could tell she had the most fun during Do Something. They threw in a hot ass dance break in the middle of Toxic that they didn’t have during the first show.
All in all, it was a stellar show. There were only two negatives about the whole evening. The first is that my section was completely lacking in any sort of fagotry. I was the only one who stood up and danced the whole show. How the heck do I get in the one section of the entire audience without a heaping helping of gayness? Thankfully I ran into two friends on the way out and we were able to really “talk” it through in a way that only the gays can do. My straight girlfriend was like “that was fun” meanwhile me and the two gays were breaking down every movement, set piece, costume, dancer, etc. The only other negative was that it took us forever to get back into Manhattan. We waited for 10 minutes to cross this intersection in Newark. We asked the cop what the problem was and he said all of the cop cars they use for post-show traffic were busy taking Britney back to the hotel. Who can get mad at that?
Phew, long review but I wanted to get everything important in there. I could talk for hours about this. Anyone wanna try to get some nosebleed tickets to one of her other tri-state area shows?
It’s no surprise to anyone that read this blog that I went to see Twilight this weekend. My review is after the jump. If you haven’t read the book and plan to see the movie, you might not want to read it…not that it really gives anything away.
The NKOTB concert at Madison Square Garden was amazing. Like, beyond amazing. We were trying to play it a little cool, but the second the pyrotechnics started before they got on stage we were screaming like eight year old girls. Here’s the official Not So Glamorous review…
Lady Gaga was the first opening act. I like her single but I don’t quite understand why everyone is so obsessed with her right now. (Maybe just because Perez keeps cramming her down our throats?) I’ve posted a pic below and you can see how her set would be really impressive and cool when done in a club but it just didn’t translate to Madison Square Garden. I will say she did look smoking hot and the girl has amazing legs. Her backup dancers were off timing wise and just generally looked like a hot mess. It’s probably another problem with translating a club show to a massive arena but, frankly, I could put together a better crew of boys just by combing the dance floor of Sugarland on a Saturday night. She was also a little annoying when she made a big announcement of “Tonight a star is born!” in reference to herself. No, sweetie, tonight you opened up for the star who opened up for NKOTB.
Natasha Bedingfield was the second opening act. It was boring but she did a good job - even though there were times it felt like she was screaming at me. Sister’s got a really big voice. Her new haircut is BUSTED! It looks like someone took a weed wacker to one side of head.
New Kids on the Block was, again, amazing. They rightly refer to themselves as “The Block” now instead of the “New Kids”. Like I said before, I was shocked by how darn right exciting it was. When you think about it, the average girl (and some boys) my age spent years of her childhood imaging growing up and being married to one of these guys. I used to get into fistfights with my cousin over which one of us got Jordan as her husband when we played house. She was bigger and usually won so my affections quickly turned to Jon. Anyway, you couldn’t even hear their first song because everybody was screaming like crazy. Here’s a pic of their entrance:
Thanks to American Express pre-sale we had floor seats about 100 yards away from the stage. They really gave their all to the audience. They sang everysong you wanted them to sing and only made us listen to about 4 of the songs from the new album. Jordan even got to do that single he came out with like 10 years ago. That shizz is my jam still. Anyway, so one of the most exciting parts of the night was when we noticed a piano on a small round stage in the center of the floor…oh, only about 25 feet from us. We were so ridiculously close. Here’s my favorite picture from the small stage. You can see how much fun they are having with the whole thing:
It was interesting that all the guys slipped right back into their old roles. Now, I’m gonna break each of ‘em down for ya, after the jump.
