My Cleveland Review, pics & vids

[skcin]

Disclaimer: for those of you that aren't familiar with my concert reviews, be aware that portions will contain useless information that nobody cares about but me. For some reason, I still insist on posting everything I can think of. I think I like to hear myself talk/watch myself type. I will try to split it up into sections so you can avoid my rambling if desired. Thank you.



OK, first of all, I was convinced that God did not want me & Theresa (bikerchic) to see this show. When driving to my house, T got turned away at the border because someone threatened to bomb the Peace Bridge (no, seriously.) So she had to go way out of her way to the Rainbow Bridge, and got to my house an hour after she wanted to be. We get going, all excited to be on our way. About an hour into the supposed 3 hour drive, we hit construction traffic jam. We sat for 25 minutes, then moved down the road a bit to sit for another 15. Mind you, there weren't actually ANY MEN WORKING, but the lanes were blocked anyway. We wanted to get to the hotel by 3, ended up there around 4:40 I believe.

Fine. We're not totally screwed, but we are rushed. We call Curtis & his man Chris (they got a room at the same hotel,) change clothes/freshen up & have a beer. Carrie picks us all up around 5:30 & we head out to eat. Went to a place in Little Italy & told them we were in a rush & had to be outta there by 7:20pm. Dinner was good (except T ordered garlic cheese bread & she got 4 slices of buttered toast with a glob of garlic in the middle of each one - ew) and we left on time.

We finally find the Lakewood High School Auditorium with plenty of time to spare. The Willcall window was a folding table with voluteers handing out the tix. I joked about this earlier, but it seriously was. I felt like I was at BINGO or a school craft show. T & I go to our 5th row center seats & sit down, chatting with the ladies next to us. For the record - if there's ever any show at this place again, it's the perfect scenario to get a video boot of the show. I saw 2 security guards, and they didn't seem to care what anyone was doing. Had I known, I would have brought my 8mm video cam with me.

The venue is pretty nice for a school. Seats comfy, plenty of elbow room, clean bathrooms. Small & initmate, we felt so close to him even from the 5th row (which was actually 8th including the pit.) Sound was my only complaint, as it was very loud & distorted at times. But not for every song. Venuew was about 2/3 full. The crowd was odd. On one hand many people sat, even in the pit, and even for more well known and/or rocking tunes. On the other hand, people were cheering loudly in all the right places, yelling out requests between songs, and he received several standing ovations. There were a lot of diehard fans there from what I could see. You could tell he was really feeling our energy, and it showed in his performance. It was kickass.