Beyonce is better looking in person. She is absolutely stunning! Her makeup, her wig and her costumes were all flawless. Photos simply don’t do justice to all three.

I had a floor ticket with a not so great view (that will teach me to miss Jessica Mauboy and Flo Rida!) but there was a great atmosphere. To be honest, I wasn’t all that excited about seeing the concert, possibly because I shouldn’t have been going in the first place and because I went on my own. However, I decided that after Michael Jackson died, I would never miss a concert I really wanted to see ever again.

Having said that, as soon as the lights went down, my heart started pumping and I got excited. And not just in a “wow, this is so cool” way. I mean in a totally crazy fan-girl way. Beyonce burst onto the stage in a puff of smoke and started the show with an amazing and high energy “Crazy In Love”, complete with live horns. She knew how to get the party started, and the high energy hits kept coming- “Naughty Girl”, “Freakum Dress” and “Get Me Bodied”.

After a costume change, she came out in all white and sang “Smash Into You” and “Ave Maria”. “Smash Into You” was simply stunning but her staging and ridiculously soppy rendition of “Ave Maria” almost could have ruined the show for me. During the song, dancers came up and attached a mock wedding gown to her white leotard, complete with a veil. It was awful. It was obviously intended to invoke romantic emotions, but it was simply way too over the top. She should have kept it simple: her standing under a white spotlight like she did for most of the song would have sufficed and would have kept that emotion. It’s such a beautiful song and it’s a shame she had to kill the mood with something so corny.

She quickly redeemed herself after taking the wedding crap off and singing “Broken- Hearted Girl”. After another costume change, she sang “If I Were a Boy”. The costume and staging of this was so epic, and what pleased me most is that she had the song flow into a rendition of Alanis Morrisette’s “You Oughta Know”. “Diva” was fun but one of the highlights of the show for me was “Radio” which sounded so good live, it was almost unrecognisable musically for the first few bars. I have had trouble listening to that song on the album, but she really took it to another level with the music, choreography and amazing vocals. She then sang “Me Myself and I” for the ladies.

One of the highlights was when she “flew” out on stage from the main stage to a second smaller stage in the middle of the crowd. She looked amazing and had the whole crowd singing “Irreplaceable”, “Check On It” and songs from Destiny’s Child. “Upgrade U” was so high energy and incredible! “Video Phone” was creative and once again, incredible staging and concept. She played with the crowd a little with “Say My Name” by picking out a guy from the audience and making him say “Beyonce” and she sang his name back to him. It was a lot of fun.

I didn’t expect to get emotional during her ballads, but she really sounds so much more amazing in person vocally. During “At Last” and “Listen”, she stood there and delivered the vocal goods and I couldn’t help but shed a tear.

The last 2 songs were also a definite highlight. “Single Ladies” was one of my favourites- epic dancing, singing, and the fact that she stopped and said “Ladies, put your hand right in his FACE…”. The crowd went mental! Just as people thought it was all over, she came back out and sang “Halo” while interacting with the crowd. At the end of “Halo”, a large HD picture of Michael Jackson popped up, the crowd went crazy, and she sang her stunning tribute to Michael Jackson. People were crying and cheering and it was all for Michael. She ended the show on a happy note and said “Brisbane, I am… yours” before leaving the stage.

The stage seemed a little small and crowded to me- but this was Brisbane after all. I got so used to seeing the DVD’s of previous concerts that I forgot that in person the stage would be smaller and the band would be closer together. It didn’t really matter though, Beyonce made excellent use of the stage space and aside from the big screens either side of the stage, there was a massive high definition screen at the back of the stage which showed everything from home videos of Beyonce dancing as a young girl to images of President Obama and epic video montages in between some songs.

The “I Am…” show was far more theatrical than any Destiny’s Child or previous Beyonce concert I have seen. The interludes and breaks for costume changes were short and tight, proving that Beyonce just gets better. Everything was professional and well organised.

Beyonce’s vocals were simply stunning. She sounded better on stage than on her albums and she danced and sang live at the same time with her totally awesome all-female band providing some of the best pop concert music I have heard. The vocal stand outs were “Radio”, “Broken-Hearted Girl” and “Listen”.

I was disappointed with some things in the show. Aside from the awful staging of “Ave Maria”, the Destiny’s Child medley was a little choppy and didn’t flow as well as the rest of the show. She also didn’t perform songs that you would expect- “Sweet Dreams”, which was replaced by a video montage (which looked amazing, but it would have been much better if she performed the song live), and songs like “Déjà Vu” or “Ego”. She opted for album tracks like “Radio” and “Video Phone” that don’t even have a video clip. But overall, the show was amazing, and she really worked it out. Impressive, fun, professional and theatrical!

This will be a short post- I just wanted to say that since Michael Jackson died, I chose to delete my blog on Michael’s vitiligo. From the moment it was confirmed he’d passed, I got an influx of comments on it, ranging from angry to sad to spam to plain stupid.

I already said in the blog I was not a medical professional and that the blog was made up of quotes, research and of course, my own personal opinion. Yet I had several people abusing me about my blog- yes, within hours of Michael’s death.

I also received disgusting hate fueled comments, and I was deleting and spamming most of the comments that were coming in, so I chose to just delete the whole blog. I have it saved in case I decide to resurrect it in the future. I doubt it will happen though- everything I said about Michael’s vitiligo was correct, as per everything that Michael Jackson’s dermatologist has confirmed in the last 3 weeks.

All you need to do is google to find these quotes that confirmed what myself and many fans before and after me have blogged, posted or shared about Michael’s vitiligo. Thanks to those fans who sought the truth and tried (and continue to try) to enlighten others.

Several dancers chose to tweet and blog about their auditions and there were some exciting details that emerged.

The best account we have had of what it was like inside the auditions is Victoria Parsons’ blog. She wrote about the grueling and exciting audition process here. A dancer called Erynn Joi also wrote about the auditions (prior to auditioning) which gave some insight into the expected pay and contract conditions.

Only 6 guys and 2 girls were chosen (with understudies) and those who made the callback on the second day had to perform in front of Michael Jackson himself. It would appear that Michael Jackson has chosen new, fresh, young talent to dance at his shows which is great. MJ has often used the same dancers on all his tours and rarely used female dancers. I am hoping this is a sign of growth and exciting things in store for the shows!

If you’d like to read more about some of the dancers that auditioned, please visit their twitter pages and blogs:

http://twitter.com/thetwinz / (Myspace, fansite and official site)

http://iamerynnjoi.blogspot.com/ http://twitter.com/ERYNNJOI

http://twitter.com/dannydavalos

http://twitter.com/MrMarkSamuels

http://twitter.com/Islarose87

http://twitter.com/charamonanjaya

http://twitter.com/msvictoria

Hopefully there will be more details to come!

To check out more details as they emerge, click here.

Then there’s the awesome twitter, which I update a bit more frequently. If you’d like to follow me on twitter, here’s the link: https://twitter.com/marndizz

Anyway, I’ll be posting shortly about the dancer auditions for Michael Jackson’s shows!

This man is a complete legend, and I found myself struggling to hold back tears has he was escorted on stage by his daughter Aiesha Morris. To know that I was in the same room as this incredible musician and breathing the same air was almost too much!

A few things should be pointed out before I continue. I saw Justin Timberlake in October last year (see my review) and thought it was great. A few things haven’t changed at the BEC- people were still walking out half way through the last song and before the lights went up, though not nearly as many as at the JT concert.  But what had changed was the atmosphere. Justin Timberlake was standing nearly the whole time and dancing during his show, and barely anyone got up to dance as he performed, except for when SexyBack was played (when the place erupted) and those who were already standing (or stumbling rather) in the SexyBack Lounge.

With Stevie Wonder, things were quite different. For a man who sits at the piano nearly the whole concert, he had the crowd in an absolute frenzy, with people dancing, standing up, shouting, singing, for the whole 2 hours and 15 minutes that he played. I heard lots of “I love you Stevie”‘s and shout outs from the crowd, to the point where Stevie actually had to ask the crowd if he could continue with his story at one point! The power of real music…. is all I can say.

On with the review…

From the moment the band started playing, it was non stop. At the end of it, I was thinking “where did the time go?” It was song after song- just amazingly good music. Normally I can’t stand “jam sessions” but with Stevie’s supreme band, I could have listened to them jam all night. The musicianship was beyond superb.

Stevie’s voice was better than I have ever heard it sound. And he’s 58 years old! Knowing that he has been touring for the last few months, and has been playing these songs over and over again, it was quite a treat to be able to hear all his classics delivered with so much attention, beauty and emotion as ever.

It didn’t matter what Stevie sang- the crowd would have sang with him. He had us all in the palm of his hand- calling us the Steveland Morris Brisbane Choir- and having us sing back to him from the start. In Master Blaster, he had 10,000 people singing “God is good!”. At other times, he had us singing backing for Part Time Lover (which we weren’t really great at) and chanting “Barack Obama” at the end. This man could have sang “My shit is brown” and everyone would have sung along with him or sang it back to him, and been in awe!

The crowd interaction was incredible- a real concert experience, where you feel like you are right there with Stevie. He didn’t have to ask us twice “Are you with us? Are you with me?” (even though he did), because we were all right with him from the very beginning.

Stevland Hardaway Morris is an absolute legend and genius. He did every song I was hoping he’d do and some I wasn’t expecting. Prior to the concert, I did hope he would do “You Haven’t Done Nothing”, “Ribbon In The Sky” and “For Once In My Life”, but it really didn’t matter in light of the songs he did do. It has always been my dream to see “Overjoyed” and “Lately” played one after the other. And he did just that. Needless to say, it was my favourite part of the concert- they were played with all the emotion and beauty that those songs deserve- it was just a dream to see. Other highlights for me were “Master Blaster”, “All I Do”, “Don’t You Worry Bout a Thing”, and “Higher Ground”. “Superstition” was an experience all on its own- I have never seen such crowd excitement! After the concert, Stevie had a 5 minute standing ovation from the crowd- a most deserving one too.

I feel sorry for everyone who missed out on this tour. It was absolutely amazing, and an experience I will never forget. It was exciting, beautiful, emotional… and simply WONDER-ful!

Thanks to the uploaders of this footage from the Brisbane concert:

Don’t You Worry Bout A Thing:

Master Blaster:

Lately:

Today, several new news articles emerged regarding the ‘Michael Jackson Collection’. An insider was quoted as saying, “It’s still in the developing stages, but it’s going to be big. This will be a major comeback for Michael. He’s dedicating a lot of his time and money to this venture.” It was also revealed that Michael’s clothing line could be available soon at L.A. boutique Kitson.

In addition, X17 revealed today that Michael Jackson and Christian Audigier will be launching a brand new clothing store in Las Vegas at the Treasure Island Hotel on July 4, 2008!

Check out all the additional details in the MaxJax forums!

Source: Maximum Jackson / JustJared / x17

• Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ 2008 With Akon
• Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ 2008 With Akon (Johnny Vicious Club-radio Remix)
• Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ 2008 With Akon (Johnny Vicious Full Club Remix)

To purchase, click here.

Source: iTunes / Maximum-Jackson

Check out more pics of the 3T boys and Tito here!

More at http://www.maximum-jackson.com/discussion/

http://www.devon24.co.uk/northdevongazette/news/story.aspx?brand=NDGOnline&category=news&tBrand=devon24&tCategory=newsndga&itemid=DEED11%20Jun%202008%2011%3A57%3A15%3A260

Jacko’s phone call’s a thriller

devon.editorial@archant.co.uk
11 June 2008

Stars Tito Jackson and sons Taj (left) and TJ (two-thirds of band 3-T) with fan party organiser George Warren. Picture: www.andycaseyphotography.co.uk

Tito, who is understood to be flying back to America this week said: “I love North Devon. The people have been beautiful to me and I’ve been out for a lot of walks in the evening to enjoy the beautiful sunsets – I’ve had a ball!