Not so Quick recap of Fantabuloso (May 18, 2012)
My 13yo son and I went to Fantabuloso last night. It was exactly as expected for a radio concert. Lots of filler, lots of time between acts, dumb DJ banter trying to hype up the crowd. It was at the Allstate Arena which is known for its bad sound. I've even heard stories that some artists refuse to play there due the terrible sound! I would only do this for Adam :)

We got to our seats just as the show was starting. We were to stage right in the first section off the floor. It was a good view of both the stage and the audience. I could clearly see the floor area and most of the tiered seating. The show was not completely sold out, but the floor and lower tier were mostly full and a significant number up in the second tier.

They did a quick video intro of all the acts. Biggest cheers for Enrique and the Wanted, but Adam was definitely above average which surprised me.
Keep in mind that Chicago has had VERY little exposure to Adam. Kiss 103.5 barely played WWFM (mostly in the middle of the night) and played IIHY a little bit more. (They also played FYE a few times before it was dropped.) Our other Top40 station (B96) has NEVER played any of his music that I know of. WWFM gets play on the HAC and AC stations. Adam has NEVER done a solo concert in Chicago (OK, this arena is in the suburbs, but it is as close to Chicago as he has been!) The closest GNT got was Hammond Indiana and that was a casino show for only 21 and over.

The show started with Karmin - not going to go into details for all the artists who are not Adam, but they just didn't get me interested. The arena was only about half full at that point & only a few were dancing. Many were just ignoring them completely. 4 songs

A lot more people were there for Cobra Starship and they were pretty good. Most of the audience near me stood for at least part of their act. They had a few songs that most of the audience knew. 5 songs

Havana Brown was next. I do NOT understand the concept of DJ as stage act. Just weird to me to watch someone messing with turntables and equipment as entertainment. Lots of kids danced thru this set, so I guess it was a success? She "sang" her song last. Pretty sure it was just playing and she voiced over a few parts. There were times she had the mic nowhere near her face and still the song continued uninterrupted.

Next was the very creepy Carly Rae Jepson. She was dressed as a 14 yo. She skipped and bopped around the stage like a little girl. I just found out she is in her early 20s! She did 2 songs. First was boring - even the tweens near me who were excited to see her were having trouble getting into it. 2nd was Call Me Maybe. It's a catchy song and all the tweens were dancing like crazy, but it was a total lip-sync and not well done lip-sync.

There was a huge break before Adam. Lots of stage setup and some sort of technical difficulty. They pretty much played music and some of the kids kept dancing, but most of the audience was wandering around or just sitting in their seats. Finally a DJ came out and started trying to get the crown hyped up again. Just a bunch of "who can scream loudest?", "who's the best dancer?" stuff. We were 2.5 hours into this show by then & I think some of the teens were wearing down a little! LOL They eventually told the DJ that the problem was fixed and he introduced Adam. He was enthusiastic but I don't think he really knew much about Adam. Just said something about how he has come way beyond idol and is great. There was a female DJ who introduced a couple earlier acts who actually knew about them and gave way more info - oh well, not a big deal.

Adam sounded far better than anyone before him. The soundsystem is crap, but you can still tell how much better he is! The crowd around me got to their feet for Trespassing. I made a conscious effort to look around the audience and most of the arena seemed interested. Of course, they weren't singing along, but most were standing and grooving a bit to music. Most of the floor was up and maybe 2/3 in the lower tier. Higher tier was hard to judge - too dark. Kickin In was very good, but some of the crowd sat during that and shady. People near me still seemed to be doing a little seat dancing however. WWFM was AMAZING. The entire damn stadium sang along! From where I was, I could hear the sound coming from all over - I got chills :) I thought Cuckoo got a good response - similar to Trespassing as did NCOE.
Given that the vast majority of this audience had NEVER heard these songs before, I was pretty impressed with the reaction. People were paying attention and many were up and dancing. Most of the floor was up for the whole set.

I can't say anything about the rest of the show. My son declared his ears were "tired" so we left after Adam's set. I would have liked to seen Enrique, but not enough to deal with a cranky kid!

Overall, I was really happy with how this went. The show was pretty much exactly as expected for a radio show. The sound is awful - but I think it is better on the sides than on the floor - and Adam still sounded fantastic. He looked happy and danced a lot. Oh yeah, he got a LOT of screams for some of the sexy moves also. LOL

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