Last night I saw my first concert in the 00's -- Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Lovers tour. As one of the few people in the stadium who had actually been to Harajuku, I had to show up to give the show legitimacy. :) I haven't been to a concert in ages. I think the last one was Aerosmith in Tokyo in 1998 or 1999. If I'm not mistaken, the last concert I saw at the Palace of Auburn Hills was Madonna circa early 90s. Must have been the Blond Ambition tour. Not a whole lot has changed except I'm a lot older now. (And people lift their glowing cell phones aloft rather than lighters.) I knew there would be a young crowd but I was surprised to see more than a few people my age, often with their children in tow. The couple behind me brought their son and daughter who were probably about 4 and 6. Unfortunately the little girl had a piercing scream, much louder and painful than the loud concert music. I was tempted to turn around and say something but I didn't. It was a concert, after all.

The Black-Eyed Peas opened for Gwen. I never heard of them until I looked into buying tickets for this tour but then I realized I'd heard several of their songs. Also this last month or so I've been watching MTV Hits channel and several more of their current songs have been getting play. They played a song Where is the Love? which seemed to deal with serious issues. But just when you think that this group might have something to serious say they play a song called My Humps which is about "lady lumps." They ended with Let's Get Retarded which I was familiar with from last year's NBA theme.

Gwen Stefani put on a good show though I bet the last No Doubt tour was better. I'm sorry I missed that one. When she introduced her band and dancers, I was pleasantly surprised that three of the four were from Japan. I figured they were probably just Asian Americans but her Harajuku Girls were the real deal (well maybe not from Tokyo but at least they were Japanese).

I'm not going to give a track by track account of the concert but it was good show. A lot of theatrics and choreography so somewhat reminiscent of the Madonna show in that regard. During What You Waiting For? My wife threw in some of the appropriate Japanese that was on the CD. Gwen Stefani aishite iru!

Basically she played her whole album and a couple of new tracks.
Harujuku Girls
What You Waiting For
The Real Thing
Crash
Luxurious
Rich Girl
Danger Zone
Long Way To Go
Wind It Up (new)
Orange County Girl (new)
Cool
Bubble Pop Electric
Hollaback Girl

I wonder if the 6-year-old behind me knew that Bubble Pop Electric is about a girl having sex in the back seat of the car with her boyfriend. I'm pretty sure if I had kids, I wouldn't be taking them to concerts at that age. Of course in my case, my main reason would be because I wouldn't want to waste the money on tickets!

Gwen ended up (her "encore") with Hollaback Girl which is a pretty lame song in my opinion though it seems to be commercially popular. But then so is bep's My Humps so there's no accounting for public taste.

This shit is bananas.