Kiss108 Videos: Kris Allen & Adam Lambert

Last night, I took one for the team and went to the Kiss108 show. And I promise you will get your recap, I just have a very busy day ahead of me.

MJ has posted videos of both Adam Lambert’s set and Kris Allen’s headlining performance. Here are a sneak peek of both:

Kris Allen doing my favorite Kris Allen song, Can’t Stay Away…

Adam Lambert doing my favorite Adam Lambert song, If I Had You…

I enjoyed both sets, but they were the only ones I paid attention to. Seriously. Would I have gone to that shitfest if I didn’t have this blog? I missed Ke$ha (THANK YOU FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER) and sadly, surprise guest act Bell Biv Devoe, whom, upon coming out on stage said:

This one is for all the moms out there.

Am I really that old? You gotta be kidding me. Don’t lump me in with the moms, dammit! And I’ve always wanted to see Bell Biv Devoe, so it sucks I missed them. Alas.

But this was a Kiss108 show and there were lots of untrustworthy big butts and smiles. I wanted Jamie Oliver to show up magically and tell all these people they were going to die if they didn’t stop shoving Tostinos Party Pizzas down their throats.

I’ve enjoyed Adam Lambert’s performances more since he was on Idol, but I just wish he would do something different. I can’t explain it, but I just want the guy to thrown caution to the wind and perform with reckless abandon. Cursing and thrusting and Vanilla Ice hair is not being a fearless performer. Codpieces do not mean one is different. It just often feels contrived, as if he’s playing the part, and I just wonder if he’s capable of getting up on stage and being himself, whomever that may be. Because I really, really, really want to like him. I really want to like his band, even though I swear they were selected because they looked a certain way more than anything else. I love If I Had You and the crowd’s reaction to his new single was amazing. Little girls in front of me were jumping up and down and dancing. I just feel like his live performance often sound too much like the album. No differentiation for when he say, goes after one of his famous big notes. Can he just stop giving a fuck what his “image” is and just go with what he feels? Because that’s the Adam Lambert who could be a huge star. He did say fuck and that getting dumped pisses you off (something to that affect) which probably didn’t go over too well with the parents in the crowd, but I could give a rat’s ass — my only complaint with this sort of thing again goes back to him projecting this deliberate image of “edginess.” After seeing several 12-year-old girls in their Ke$ha-inspired finest, does it really matter if they hear a few words they’re likely already using behind your back? Frankly, children are likely better off hearing the F-word thrown around a bit than being allowed to dress like Ke$ha.

Kris Allen seems to get better the more he performs in front of large audiences. He also opened with my favorite of his songs, Can’t Stay Away. (Why oh why wasn’t that the second single?) And his band, his band is great. You can’t help but get excited watching a group of guys who are just thrilled to be up on stage playing with one another because its so obvious they’re having a great time. I always thought Allen won Idol because the guy kept improving week after week, and even now, he’s still getting better. He and the band jammed a little bit in a couple of songs and the Heartless / Gangsta’s Paradise mashup was outstanding. Is It Over seems to be a fan favorite, but I’m not sure if that’s one of my favorites, yet It’s Alright is one I liked better after hearing it live at the Rock My Town show in February. I don’t really watch performance videos even when I post them on here, so it was great finally seeing the Heartless/Gangsta’s Paradise mashup live. He also engaged with the crowd throughout his entire set, much more so than the usual what’s up Boston banter employed by most artists (hell, I probably wouldn’t know what city I was in half the time on tour, either). There was a palpable energy to his entire 6-song set, and he’s really learned how to feed off the audience in the past year. Many performers are more concerned about themselves when on a stage, but the ones who perform for their audience often end up having pretty solid careers.

The crowd was largely tweentards, many of whom this concert is a yearly tradition. The lame-ass t-shirts sold out by 2:30, leaving many attendees angry because just as the concert is a yearly tradition, so are the t-shirts. Retailing for $35, I was told that people will often by a huge lot of them and then sell them in the parking lots (or online) after the show for $50. I had no idea these t-shirts were in such demand. Do I think the Lambert and Allen may have gained some tweentard fans? Most definitely. Unless tweentards yell like that for everyone and everything. I have no clue. I had no idea people loved those damn t-shirts too much, or the fact kids now cannot even type OK while texting. They do KK b/c, as was explained to me by a mother I met, they’re too lazy to type the O when replying.

I’m still attempting to deal with this new knowledge.

Spread the word. Do it.