Guest Blogger @GoDanica7: 7/23 American Idols Live at Jiffy Lube Live in Washington, DC / Bristow, VA (PHOTOS)

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by DBF

July 23rd- Just wanted to let you know a few things about the show.

I was sitting on the front row, the Pavilion was about 60% full, which is not unusual for a show there. The venue is located about 35 miles outside of Washington, DC and when you add in Friday rush hour traffic for a 7:30pm show time, it generally takes about 90 minutes to 2 hours to get there from DC, there is also no public transportation that goes anywhere near the venue, so many from DC don’t bother even going.

Bristow is a small town, but not far from larger population hubs in Manassas, Alexandria, Fredericksburg, Arlington and a little bit further away, Richmond, which is where I drove up from for Friday’s show. To give you an idea of how poorly tickets sell at this venue, I got my tickets on the day of the show in Orchestra 2, Row A off of Stub Hub for $22 per ticket, a little more than $50 lower than the ticket’s face value. Another thing that probably affected attendance was the heat, at 7:30pm when the show started it was 102 with a heat index of 114, when the show was over around 11pm, it was still in the low 90s, not good for an outdoor venue.

Live Nation owns the place, so shows will continue to go there, because regardless of ticket sales, they will always have the company’s huge financial backing. They also get away with little bs fees like charging a $6 per ticket fee for parking, so if you go by yourself you pay $6 to park, yet a family of four pays $24 even if they are only in one vehicle. Concession prices there are also ridiculous by the way, a single draft beer is $10 and a can is $11, after I saw those, I didn’t even bother checking the food prices.

Overall it was very good show, the tech guys were well aware DiDi’s mic not working when she started singing, but in an effort to remain professional, she stayed on stage instead of running off. Being on the front row, I was chatting with one of the security guys during the fiasco, he said they did a sound check and everything went fine and that mic must of died after the sound check. He applauded DiDi for staying on stage and not running off, said that many people would have just walked off in that situation, but she showed great composure by fighting through it. During the whole song the sound guys off to the side of the stage were freaking out, you could see them frantically hitting every button possible to try to fix the issue. In the long run, it probably worked out better for DiDi’s career as it was certainly a memorable moment, and having to come do that song again, she actually got more stage time than the others.

That was not the only technical issue of the night, but it was the only big one, during Lee’s set, he clearly couldn’t hear himself, kept fiddling with his ear and finally just ripped his earpiece out mid set. I went to the show with only moderate expectations, as this was a fairly week season of Idol, but was pleasantly surprised how well everyone did. Siobhan clearly stole the show and probably has the best show of being a star of the group, you could really tell that she let loose and was much more comfortable without the judges staring her down. Crystal was outstanding as usual, Lee was excellent, I wasn’t really underwhelmed by any of the performances, with the exception of Michael Lynche attempting to rap during his cover of Justin Timberlake’s “My Love.”

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