Ok, first of all, I live about 70 miles from the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi where Carrie's concert was, so it took a little bit getting there. I had my better half, my son, my daughter in law and my four granddaughters in the 4 runner with me. That was a handfull to begin with. I had been looking forward to seeing Carrie again since the last time was in San Antonio on Nov. 16, 06.
Ever since learning of the M & G, all my grandkids had been bugging me about having Carrie sign something for each of them. Of course, that was not gonna happen. So, we all decided to get a group picture of all the grandkids, including my baby grandson when we got to my son's house in Corpus. It was 2:00 pm already when we took the picture. We all figured, except me, that we had enough time to go to Olive Garden for an early dinner before making our way to the local Sam's Club to develop the picture and the attached picture of Carrie before we had to be at the arena at 6:30 for the M & G. We didn't get out of the Garden till 4:00 pm. OK, I've got 2 1/2 hours before I need to be there. The Sam's club was packed so by the time we developed the really nice pic, it was already 5:00 pm. Great, I'm already set, I've got the pic and enough time to get there.
But, NOOOO, my daughter in law spelled one of my grandkids name wrong on the pic, so my OCD wife says, "we can't have Carrie sign her name on the pic with Lianna's name mispelled". Yes, you guessed it, we turned back to Sam's Club to "make it right".
In the meantime, I waited, and waited, and waited for them to come out. It was almost 6:00 pm before my daughter in law called and said, "their printer doesn't work". Of course, by then I said to hell with this and took off to the arena with the original misspelled picture and the entire clan and got there at 6:25. This could've been an episode of jptexas, Carrie vacation. lol
All the M & G fans were lined up in the hallway next to conference room 106 when Matt came up to meet us all. He's a really nice guy. He told us what we could and couln't do when we got inside. The local winners of radio stations give aways and others, including local djs, got to go in first. All the fanclub members were given little tags with a huge "F" written on it. Matt told us we were to go in LAST. I said to another member, "I guess the F means we're F-----". We both laughed.
I don't know how many of you have ever seen Carrie up close and personal, but she is WAY more Beautiful in person. She looks like a porcelain doll. Anyway, when the others finally got their pics and autographs, the door was closed and the guy managing the room said, Carrie, these are all the fanclub members. We got to spend a bit more time with her than the previous goups. That was great. I asked her, "how's your voice holding out". She said, actually pretty good given all I've been through with the tour. I asked her if she ever logs into Carriefans. She said Yes, but she doesn't post. I told her my signature and also because I promised, I told her Teesharky said Hi. She looked at me like she wanted to respond, but didn't. I kind of didn't expect her to. She asked about my grandkids and whose idea it was to make the photoshop copy of them and her. I told her it was their idea. At that point, I asked her if she would sign all their names and hers on the pic and she did. I asked her what she thought of this part of the tour being almost over. She said, I've got another date in New Orleans, then I'm off on vacation. I wanted to ask her "Where are you going"? Yea, like she was gonna tell me. I took our picture and she said thank you, and I said NO, thank you. I can understand the "it" thing now alot better. She has "it".
The concert started out with Jason Michael Campbell belting out his songs and all I could think of was "Damn, the music is really loud". I'm a sound guy and I love my music with power and punch, but his sound guy loves treble on the guitars and his voice. It was ear piercing. I liked his show ok but the sound just took the whole show and made it an ear damaging experience.
Finally Carrie's show began and first of all, all the talk about her sound being too loud, just went out the window. It was perfect. The bass, drums, keyboards, voice were all set the way they should be. No ear problems from Carrie's soundguy. It was professionally done.
She sang her songs just like the cd with some having some slight "live" twists to them. I was so close to the catwalk that I could see the expressions on her face as she sang JAD, IKYW, and Twisted. She has definitely improved so much since Nov of 06. She's the total package now and she rocked the house. LN, SS, JTTW, TMBIM, ITYS, Paradise City, and ofcourse BHC were the highlights for me. The girls to the right and left of me were singing every word to every song and pretty good in fact.
The whole experience, from the picture episode, to the M & G, to the concert are all great memories that I'll never forget.
I'll give Carrie a "B" for the first time I saw her in concert and a big fat "A+" for this one.
http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p...rie2008056.jpg
You just gotta love her.
