On my night with Carrie.... (and Keith, sort of)

Okay, so I sound terrible today, but I am feeling much, much better. I can take the "playing hurt" designation off of myself.

Anyhow, I had a terrific time at the Carrie Underwood/Keith Urban concert last night. I did underestimate just how bad traffic would be getting to the Giant Center. It's usually a 20 minute trip from my house, I left a little over an hour early, and yet I still wasn't quite to my seat when Carrie sang her first notes. It was a pretty cool feeling when I walked in and handed the guy my ticket and he was like "You're on the floor" and pointed me where I needed to go, and then when the usher down on the floor kept taking me further and further up, till we finally got to the 5th row. Right before we got to my seats she told me "If you go back upstairs for some reason, make sure you keep your ticket stub, because there's no way they are going to let you back up here without it". Awesome. I was probably about 15-20 feet back from the main stage, and similarly far awy from the middle section that led out to a secondary stage in the front. Unfortunately, in my still somewhat ill state, I was foggy enough to believe that when they said "no cameras", they actually meant it, so I didn't get anything in the way of pictures. I tried a few shots with my camera phone, but the lighting just overwhelmed that little camera.

Carrie put on a heck of a show. Not that I didn't know this already, but the girl can flat out sing. There are lots of people that sound awesome on their albums, but she was just incredible live, and I don't know that I had a real concept of just how good her voice is prior to last night. Terrific. And of course, she was rather easy to look at as well. Very classy dress though, which is one of the things I appreciate about her, as opposed to many other female music stars. The crowd was much more subdued for Carrie's set than I would have expected, especially since I was so close to the stage. On a normal night, I think I would have been disappointed by that, but since I was playing hurt, I was grateful that I didn't have to stand for the duration of the concert. I'm sure the woman in my row that was on crutches felt the same way.

I'm not the biggest Keith Urban fan, but the man is a ridiculous performer. The crowd was NOT subdued for his set, and I was on my feet for as long as I stayed. It was interesting being submerged in a sea of middle aged women who all suddenly started behaving like middle school girls when Keith came out. Some people had cut out a ton of construction paper hearts that they wanted everyone to hold up at the end of his first number, for Valentine's Day. I was given a heart, but did not hold it up, because, well, I'm a guy, and I'm not gay. Something about a guy holding up a heart at another guy.... yeah. Lots of people did go along with it though, and Keith was quite amused at the stunt. Like I said though, outstanding performer, seriously rocked the place out while I was there. I left midway through his set, because as I said, I'm not his biggest fan, it was already past ten, I was already feeling tired due to being sick, and I knew if I stayed to the end, it might be close to 1 until I got home between getting out of the arena and the massive traffic jam. Had it been a Friday night show, I would definitely have been there for the duration regardless, but the sensible adult in me took over. By the time I got home, I almost had all of my hearing back.

This was actually the first concert I'd seen at the Giant Center. I'd seen several at the old Hersheypark Arena, and that big concrete silo was just a terrible venue because of how bad the acoustics were. If you didn't know the songs, you were out of luck because you had zero chance of making out the lyrics. Much better experience at the Giant Center.

Overall, a high quality way to spend an evening.