ORLANDO, FL-HARD ROCK CAFE 2/11/2011

[WilsonClaymate]

Marilyn was at work earlier when she started having trouble -- and I think I work long hours.

Gotta go fix something to eat and get ready to go to GDs soccer game early tomorrow morning.

[Tiffany]

Night Barb.

[Tiffany]

Well guess that's all for now. Thanks again everyone for coming. Sounds like we are in for quite a treat on this tour. See you tomorrow night.

[Marilyn]

From the CH

 
When Clay was sitting down on the edge of the stage and noticed the woman in the front row with her camera about 3 feet away from him, he said, "You're going to be really popular on the boards tomorrow." (or words to that effect)

[Marilyn]

From Corabeth's post at CC:


OMGOMGOMG

Recap later tonight but one correction from what Artquest posted. He said he wished he had kept the style of "Something About Us" for TnT. Could someone please post that on CH too.
More later, I have a pretty good memory for details.
 

[Marilyn]

GBB texts that Clay sang "Who's Sorry Now" as rock and roll and it was sublime!!1 He scream sang it like a metal singer! "And the crowd went nuts.

and there is Clack.

[Marilyn]

diamondjake

artquest wrote:

GBB liked the concert! Solitaire just killed her! Corabeth says the theme to Love Story was worth every penny she spent getting there. Plus Rock and Roll Clay was great.

He asked the filmer what her name name was. She refused. He said, "We don't want to get wacky over this!"

He did not say anything about wacky. He asked them their screen names and they wouldn't say. He asked if that wasn't allowed. Did we not tell each other our screennames. I (without thinking- blame it on the 2 amarettos while waiting for the show to start) said just not to you directly to Clay. He was sitting on the stage directly in front of me. That brought a reaction from Clay and Quiana which we'll have to see on the  clack. I almost said 'shit' as soon as It came out of my mouth.

[Marilyn]

CORABETH
Hard Rock in a Tight Place (ahem)

Invisible and I had pulled fourth row in the fanclub presale but she also ended up getting a single in the first row. Dc4clay offered me a second row next to her so at the start of the show, I went to the last row and spotted a couple who just looked like NJU and/or PBS newbies. I asked if anyone had never seen Clay before and they raised their hand. I said “fourth row tickets for free, we upgraded and don’t need them”. The woman next to them asked if I had two more but sadly I only had one row fifth row right behind them. Her husband encouraged her to go but she chose to stay with him. I love doing that. I only wish I could have found them at the end to ask what they thought.

The Hard Rock is not raked and they jammed those seats so close together, I felt like a model on ANTM where they bend their shoulders forward in that weird pose . It was tight but oh so close to the stage, which was very high and did not afford a good look at his shoes until he sat on the stage.

The music began with the curtain down and he started to sing softly “Where do I begin”. He sang a few lines like that and then the curtain opened. It sounded like he stumbled just a bit, maybe he was mouthing “why is the curtain still down!”

I can’t describe that song. The original Andy Williams version is kind of overly lush. He started this one out softly, the way he did Home the other night. But it built up into a vocal tour de force that seemed to lift me out of my seat like I was weightless. It was an amazing way to open the show. It was almost as if he threw down the gauntlet to all the rest of the pop crap out there. If Ben did that arrangement, I salute him and take back anything I ever said about the way he plays solo accompanist to Clay at GFI. It blew me away. I almost grabbed my phone to simply type Holy.Shit. to Nanjeanne. I just tweeted that it was Steve Perry-esque.

We went through training at work about how to hold a great meeting. One thing is “hook them from the start.” Well, damn you Clay, you hooked me from the start. I was so hooked I would have even welcomed It’s Impossible without complaint. (With that said, I was thrilled he tossed it and substituted some great stuff.)

The stage set up was kind of odd. The band was really over to the sides (Ben and his mini Radio Shack with Adam on one side and Felix and Dell on bass on the other. There was a giant white screen as a backdrop, presumably used for videos and other special effects. It made the lack of any production really stand out, I wish it had been another velvet curtain. That would have been perfect.

He did Hush and CTMEOOY with a little groove to his body. I don’t think he realizes that his body moves naturally like that, the man has dance in his limbs if he just lets go.

He talked to the audience quite a bit, talked to a woman who had her share of bloody Marys, they kept count as the concert went on. He talked about Aguilera and how “sometimes it just happens”. He mentioned that he had a really hard time last night with the echo and that tonight’s sound was good so he already felt like we were really together in this.

He was wearing a lighter gray sweater with white shirt and what looked like a white/gray tie. Jeans and shoes that sometimes looked gray to me and sometimes more of a mixture of tan/gray. Very stylish. The hair looked just fine in profile but had a ton of gel in the front and was straight up, almost at perfect attention. It’s really atrocious straight on but I think he’s doing it to toy with us. Just comb it over to the side Clay. It will look better and will be less work.

He left off It’s Impossible, I can’t remember if he did Moon River or Breaking Up is Hard to do then or later but he really does an exquisite job on Breaking Up. I loved it in Chicago and I loved it tonight.

You know how Clay often sings to a camera when someone is taking a picture. Well the people on either side of me were taking still pictures so it felt like he sang the entire first verse of Moon River to me.

The medley was clever, although some of it started to all sound the same to me. Invisible is really quite fun in that style, especially with our “secret handshake” aka the tug. Quiana was in great voice as usual and I’m so glad she went back to the shorter hair that she has now versus that long weave she had over the summer. This haircut frames her beautiful face. I also have always wondered if she has perfect pitch. They remind me of a doubles tennis team, always knowing where and what the other one is doing or going to do.

I think the can’t remember the name of "On My Way Here" is part of the schtick. Tonight he called it ATDW. (Come to think of it, I think that’s when he talked about Aguilera) GBB and I were debating after the show if he meant he wished he’d done the "Something About Us" type of songs on this album or if he wished he had saved "Something About Us" for this album.

SM was good and Make Believe is kind of different without horns but I still find I sing along to it. I want to say he did Buttercup right after that instead of later in the program.

I think the auto tune came next but can’t be sure. He said that every night, Ben will not tell him which lyrics they will give him. They did Bad Romance and it was very funny to hear Clay say Rah Rah, etc. Before they did that, he asked who people listen to and someone said Bieber. He said Quiana listens to him in her dressing room which is rather sad. Another person said Kei$ha and he made her stand up. He said something about having a dollar sign in her name (I was impressed he knew) and semi mocked her singing.

He talked to the audience a bit more and then came over by us and sat down on the stage. He sang WKOFAI and Misty right there. An older couple in the second row about 6 seats down from me were filming and he asked the man about it. The man said Misty was their song. It was so nice that it worked out that way. A woman in the front row was filming him and he commented about it and assured her that she wouldn’t get thrown out. He then started talking again and said “I feel like I should talk to the camera” and proceeded to do it like a TV interview for a few seconds. He asked her what her screen name was and she wouldn’t tell him. He said “you guys don’t tell your screen names?” and GBB said “not to you”. He turned to say something to Quiana and said that would be wacky or something to that effect but definitely with wacky in it. But I’m not sure how many heard it because he was sort of off mic and the crowd was already laughing.

He got up and said something about his brittle bones. He said that they were going to put in Who's Sorry Now but realized that it was a lot of slow songs in a row and that was the slowest. He asked for song genres and the first one was Disco. Quiana sang most of it while Clay did the Travolta move. Someone said country but he said it was a country song already. When someone said rock and roll, he thought for a minute and whispered an idea to Quiana. They were both talking and nodding and then he grabbed that mic and did a Quiet Riot version of WSN. He rocked that mic back and forth, he was freaking awesome. The crowd went mental. He said later that it was tough on his voice.

He sang MTK and mentioned that he sang the same verse four times last night. He did pretty good tonight, only messing up one small place. It’s a hard song to sing because the words aren’t really “normal” in some cases. The end was great.

Quiana did her second solo and then he came out to do Crying. He looked at her with such tenderness and at the end, he said how great she was and he didn’t know what he would do without her. She had left the stage by then and came back carrying her (kick ass)shoes. He mentioned that she’d done 8 tours with him because she didn’t do one Christmas. Then he introduced the band again and he and Felix discussed how many tours they were together and Clay said he hoped that Felix would be back with them again. (Dell, the bass player is a friend of Felix.) Each time he talked about one he mentioned that he hoped they would be back with them again. Couple that with mentioning that he had toured with Ruben about four times and it is things that make you go hmmmm.

When he was talking about Ben, he said that he met Ben through another drummer, Jesse. And the crowd laughed and he said Sean!

He talked about UM and he mentioned Dave Novik three times, twice just as Dave as if the audience was supposed to know who that was. He said when Ben sent the new arrangement of UM, he didn’t know what it would sound like since he can’t read music. So the first time he heard it was when he went to London to have the symphony record it. He said he called Ben from London because he almost cried at how good it was.

When he started UM, that first verse where he sings “are you, still mine? And he usually just sings it as a pretty ordinary semi long note. Well tonight, he started it soft and then got louder and louder with it. Not changing the note itself like in the airplane note, but in a way that showed just absolute amazing control.

He left the stage and we all stood and clapped until they raised the curtain again. He was sitting in an office type chair and sang IML without any mentions of teachers. Then he told a story about Rita in the M&G who had won last summer but couldn’t make it so they got her in today. She was with her granddaughter who wanted a picture of herself with Clay since Rita had replaced all the family pictures in the house. She asked him for Solitaire and he said he didn’t tell her that it was already planned anyway. He sang it and he played with the melody a little, singing lower in some cases, minor key all in all making it even more interesting.

The crowd jumped to its feet again and the lights came up. And I exhaled for the first time in almost two hours.

The venue was perfect for this type of show. The set list was great between the songs and the banter and I liked this set list 1000X more than last night's. I really wonder what kind of album he could have had if he took away some of the older boring songs (to me) and replaced them with Where Do I Begin, Both Sides Now, In My Life, Breaking Up and added some up tempo. It would have been a far superior album, IMO.

Vocally, he surpassed himself. It’s funny, but no matter how much clack you watch in between tours, it simply doesn’t compare to seeing him perform live and even then, it’s still almost shocking at how well he can sing. He hit some low notes tonight that vibrated within me.

I’m a big baseball fan. Robert Redford made a baseball movie years ago called The Natural in which his character, Roy Hobbs is asked how he wants to be remembered. He said he would like to be walking by someone on the street years from now and hear “there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was.”

Tonight, I saw Clay Aiken…The Best That Ever Was

[Marilyn]

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