Archuleta Unleashed: A Concert Review
Last night I had the distinct pleasure of taking my 5 year old daughter to see David Archuleta in Pocatello, Idaho. The show was 30 minutes late in starting. Amy Mirello (sic?) opened the show accompanied by a guy named Jay on acoustic guitar. She was personable and managed to get the crowd of pre-pubescent girls to stop texting and look up from their cell phones for a few minutes. Mirello must have some connection to the 19 Entertainment/A.I. cabal. She name dropped Kara DioGuardia and sang a song that she claimed to have co-written with her. She also said that Archuleta himself was a fan and personally selected her as the supporting act on his tour.
After the opening act, the next 30 minutes were spent watching and listening to Archuleta’s overweight roadie tune guitars and check mikes. Another roadie put out water bottles and towels thick enough to soak up the Exxon Valdez oil spill. I was thinking-it’s 30 degrees and snowing outside-are these guys really going to work up that much of a sweat.
The crowd was growing restless and I heard one girl yell “Bring out David!” with a tone in her voice that said “It’s late, get your ass out here and sing you little twerp”.
While I was waiting I imagined David backstage, overcome with nerves, in a fetal position, and his manager/father Jeff gently coaxing his meal ticket er…I mean son on stage with an electric cattle prod.
Archuleta finally appeared to the delight of the screaming audience. Much of the show was a blur. To be honest, the kid can sing and his stage banter was surprisingly coherent. I don’t know the names of any of his songs except “Crush”. He introduced one song as being a bonus track on the Wal-Mart edition of his album and another song being from the itunes album, deluxe edition.
His band sounded good. His bass player looked like a young Tommy Lee. I imagine he is probably wondering how his rock-n-roll fantasy turned into the nightmare of backing-up a mouseketeer. His drummer had Jason Castro dreds and the blond girl on keyboards reminded me of a more talented Linda McCartney. One thing I noticed, when he introduced the band he only gave their first names. It was like, ”I’m the star here and you are just the hired help”. It seems like something that his father would put him up to.
He did a cover of Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours”. I’ll admit Gaspy singing the opening line to that song was a bit uncomfortable to me-
“Well you done done me in my bed I felt it, I tried to catch you but I was so hot that I melted”.
On the two encore songs Archuleta accompanied himself competently on the piano playing Vanessa Carlton’s “Thousand Miles” and Robbie Williams’ “Angels”.
Concert Rating:
Sane, reasonable person: B
12 year old girl: A++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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