Concert Crazy

Sunday when we got back from Austin, Baby Brant and I left Mike at home and joined a bunch of my girlfriends to have dinner and attend the New Kids on the Block reunion concert at American Airlines Center.

I know I should be embarrassed about this (as Mike has been telling me for months), but I have to say, they put on an amazing show. The singing and dancing were still great, and they rolled out all of their old hits for the occasion. I'm not sure which was my favorite, but Hangin' Tough, The Right Stuff, Please Don't Go Girl and I'll Be Loving You Forever were all awesome. They did, however, go a little crazy with stuff off the new album. New Kids, I love you, but this concert should have been 75% old stuff, 25% new stuff. It ended up being more 50%/50%.

Mike was a little horrified to learn that this was the first week Baby Brant was able to start hearing, so I'm sure he/she was treated to the sound of thousands of screaming women in their late 20s and early 30s, as well as the amazing falsetto (even after all these years!) of Jordan Knight.


On Tuesday night, Mike, Jana and I went to see my favorite band, Weezer at Nokia in Grand Prarie. It's hard to believe, but I had actually never gotten a chance to see Weezer in concert before. Because I am a member of the Weezer fan club (yes, I am a dork), I was able to get us really great tickets in a pre-sale.

I wasn't expecting anything less than awesome-ness from them, and they delivered. They did lots of old stuff, as well as some great songs off their new album (totally acceptable in this case, because their new album is really good). I was a little sad that they didn't play more from the Pinkerton album (my favorite album of all time), but they did play El Scorcho and Pink Triangle.
The highlight of the concert, however, was the "hootenanny" portion. During this tour, they had been soliciting musicians of all types (accordion players, sousaphone players, spoon players, etc.) to learn a couple of their songs and come on stage and play with them. Then they selected about 20-25 of them to actually come onstage and play a couple of songs with them during the concert. most of them looked straight out of their high school marching band, and it was an absolute riot. They played Island in the Sun and Beverly Hills, two of Weezer's most recognizable hits, and the whole audience sang along while the band played. It was a riot. The best part was the accordion solo that substituted for the guitar solo in Island in the Sun. Hilarious, and the accordion player did a great job!

They closed the show with a very cool cover of Nirvana's Sliver (amazing how obvious it was when they played that how influenced they were by Nirvana) and Buddy Holly. A great end to a great show.

I purchased Baby Brant his/her first article of clothing, a Weezer onesie. How cute is this?