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Clack
From the CB's wandacleo:
My friends, I apologize for the length of this. Feel free to scroll:
Just when I swear Clay just couldn’t get any better, he just proves me to be dead wrong. As usual: I’m paraphrasing as best I can. WPB Kravis Center is a beautiful venue with balconies up to the SKY—I mean HIGH, and there were people all the way to the top row! Clay came out on our left tonight while the audience was madly looking forward, backward, and in both directions. Jeans, white shirt (expensive one with French seams), beige jackets with faint blue squares (stripes in both directions), and beige suede loafers. Hair perfection. Didn’t notice stubble, but LOOKING GOOD!!! Amen!!! Brought the audience to its feet in a big screaming roar of approval. After he sang HCYA, while the audience was still screaming, he said something to Q (which I couldn’t decipher). When he sings, “Here you come again, and here I go…..” he sort of moves his head back and forth away from the microphone on the “go” part to modulate the sound. So cool.
EIH was just lovely—pure beautiful sound.
Before IWTKWLI, Clay looked back and forth and back and forth and finally faced Angela, who started singing and he said later it was about the first time he had gotten it right as they decide which one is going to sing each night and don’t tell him. They TORE up that song. Clay is becoming very adventurous with his falsetto and was beckoning to Angela to bring it on, but he WON with a high note to die for. During this whole contest, I got the butt view because I was in the 3rd row on the side (and yes, I’m extremely lucky). Now, normally I’d just be bitching and moaning about a butt view, but I’m willing to make an exception for Clay’s butt. Anyway, Clay was ragging on Angela about how she could sing higher and ad lib better, “but when I step away, the spotlight stays with me and they can’t see you.” Angie said, “You scared me,” and Clay said, “I scared myself. I almost broke a blood vessel. For the first time I got it right [picked the right singer] and wanted to compete in vocal calisthetics.”
Clay told the story about how Q bought the same blouse twice and Q pointed out a woman in the audience who had the same blouse!
Clay talked about how some days and good and some are bad and about having McDonald’s before and how some woman wrote to Q and said he was getting too fat, “She didn’t have the balls to write me, I guess!” (I don’t have to explain the reaction of estrogen-crazed women to the word “balls” coming out of Clay’s mouth.) He said he was frustrated: “Have you seen RUBEN? Did you write him a letter? Do you want me to give you his number?” (All outraged!)
Q was shaking her finger and pointed to a little girl in the audience, saying “He’s sorry. Clay asked the child how old she was and I couldn’t hear her, but he said “Oh, crap!” and Q got on him even more. Clay said, “Her mom’s looking at me like—I WANT MY MONEY BACK!!”
When he sang, WISYS, he was smiling very tenderly down at someone—and I think it was the little girl.
On RHW, he held the “chance” for frigging-ever.
During West Wing, Clay stepped back behind the curtains for a minute.
Clay came back and introduced the orchestra and talked about how great they were and how they should use them and exploit them and talked about the song they played and said, “Which, Angela, you know is…” but she didn’t answer WW fast enough or with enough enthusiasm and he ragged on her and said that all the energy he had felt was gone, so she (or maybe Q) yelled out WEST WING!!
Then, Clay went into his spiel about how he is sick of being accused of sitting on his “fanny” (balls and fanny in one night is almost more riches than one can bear) and watching too much TV and talked with Q about the shows she likes “Divorce court, Insider, Judge Mathis, Judge Judy, and Maury Povich,” and I think Clay said something like “Do you want a paternity test???”
They started in on the theme song routine. Clay’s pantomime of the Brady Bunch is just beyond priceless and I swear that his rubbing his fingers together to signify the couple getting together is totally naughty and he is completely aware that it is. (Dirty Clay, dirty, dirty.)
Clay said, “I feel better. You aint seen that show in how many years and it’s still stuck in your head.” Then, he told about the wrong song and said, “You’ve never heard this story before, Angela.”
When he was singing “Nothing’s going to stop me now” a little tiny bit of spit went flying out and he said, “What in the world came out of my mouth?” and I thought he was talking about the spit, but he was talking about singing the wrong song at AI (just as well as all of the women in the front row would have been on the ground rubbing their hands over the floor to get his DNA.) He divided us up for the contest sing-off and the audience was really into it—men and women and everyone. When Angie did the pole dance and shimmied down the microphone, Clay shimmed right down beside her (YOWZA!). “Party all night” was righteous.
During “Moving on Up!” Clay just danced up a storm! (Who says he can’t dance???)
When the song was over, Clay sort of collapsed on the stool and I think he must have looked down at his pants (missed that to my great dismay) because Q started giggling and couldn’t stop. Clay said, “I thought she said I busted my pants and I had to see! What did you say?” Q said that she said, “Don’t bust your pants.”
Q sang the “hit” in hit parade tonight!!
Clay asked Jesse to play Matlock and said, “I just wanted you to have a moment.”
TOA rocked.
Clay talked about how he is asked the same question in interviews “over and over and over and over and over and over” about which singers he liked the best and how it was hard to find people. He asked A and she said she listens to oldies but goodies.
He said that he likes to take a rest and break to get oxygen in and carbon dioxide out and took a number of deep breaths. He said that he had been putting together a Christmas tour and trying to pick songs for A & Q to sing but it was hard because they could sing the whole show.
Q was really good tonight.
After intermission, Clay came out laughing, saying something to Q. ATD rocked. I swear I heard a couple of little growls on some of the words.
During SSTBTHW, Clay sits demurely on the stool, tugs his shirt down, and holds his hands strategically, protecting that to which he had made a prior reference.
MOAM—great—and the audience was up and screaming again.
Clay talked about who brought who. Sean’s parents and friends were there and Clay said they were Seanmates and Claymates now and that he could depend on Sean to help fill up the venues.
Clay said to Angela, “I don’t think the pants thing is helping me” as he sort of tugged at his pants, and he said that Angela had done her “mommy” thing during the break and rolled the band on his jeans under all the way around (be still my heart) because she doesn’t think he has a butt and was afraid his pants would fall off (and someone said something I couldn’t hear but I’m sure was dirty). Clay said he could apologize for his foul mouth but he couldn’t do anything about the dirty minds of some of the women, “They get dirtier and dirtier, and most of them are married. This mother wants her money back!!!!” (pointing toward the mother of the little girl!) The audience was just about dying laughing.
Then, he started picking on a guy in the audience who just happened to be sitting RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME” Clay started asking the guy questions about if he could name what Clay was singing (I think) and the guy said,
“No, I can’t,” and Clay said, “The snoring was too loud. Did she [the guy’s wife] bring you here?”
“Absolutely” the guy answered. Clay said that sometimes you just want people to lie.
Clay asked what the wife had to do to get him to come and the guy said, “Said I’m coming.”
Clay whooped, “He’s like, I AM WHIPPED!!” Then Clay went on to say that some of the “ladies come to every single show and their husbands haven’t seen them for 2 months! When Clay was singing WY, he inserted a line about “try to stay awake.” After the song, Clay was holding his side and said he hurt, “I think I pulled something.” Then, Clay started picking on the guy again and said “You did stay awake! That was your third song!’ and the guy yelled out, “SECOND.” That cracked Clay up and he said something about the guy getting “This close!!” to getting into big trouble. He asked the guy whom he liked and he said Rod Stewart. Clay said, “Rod Stewart and me, we’re very much alike.” And then he asked for more names, and the guy said “Madonna.” And Clay said, “Some would say that we’re alike.” Clay came and squatted right down in front of the guy to talk to him. I had to force myself to look at his face since he was only about 4 feet in front of us! (Hardest thing I’ve done all year.) He asked the guy when he was born and then started asking the audience about when they were born, “in the early 40s?” and so on. Clay said that people come to his concerts in strollers and walkers.
So anyhow, Clay goes on to do the fast song stuff and starts singing his Michael Jackson and goes to get off the stage and falls on his butt (which unfortunately I couldn’t see but I could hear. Clay continued to sing and then got up on the stage and said something about “No audience has ever knocked me off my feet” and Q said he did a Beyonce. Then Clay did a whole routine:
“Who saw it? Raise your hands?” (Half the audience raised hands)
“How many of you have cameras?” (Huge amount of hands up!)
“How many of you had a video camera?” (about half the hands stay up) and Jerome makes a running grab for someone! Very funny. Clay talked about how he only fell one other time but fell gracefully but this time he fell right on his butt He said, “Thank God I have been getting fat and had some padding).
Then, he did the serious, “I want to talk” routine about what we have hear on the Internet and blogs and at work when people say, “YOU WENT TO A CLAY AIKEN CONCERT!! He’s a _____. Talked about how he’d had his fair share of criticism and he was tired of it and was “working on changing that.” During this, Q kept reminding the audience that it wasn’t funny.” Clay said, “I’m not cool, and I think it’s been obvious this evening.” He said he was sick of not being cool and not being on the radio. He said, “It takes a village, and I feel you guys can help me.” He started singing Big Butts and when he did the beginning of 1999, he squatted down and I was treated to a brief glimpse of BUTT from those low slung pants because his shirt had ridden up a bit, but Q saw it and went over and tugged the shirt down, grinning (and who wouldn’t be!!??) When he was done he was slouching around, “How you feel girl? I too cool for this mess.”
Anyhow, near the end when he’s talking some blithering idiot yelled out “BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER!!”
Clay said, “It amazes me that some people think I’m a juke box and you can just put a quarter in me [she yelled again] and I’ll sing and even after I’ve made fun of them in front of 3000 people, they still keep yelling. It makes me feel like I haven’t pleased you. You can’t make everyone happy, so I’ll sing what I want. This will make you really depressed,” and he sang LAA just beyond beautifully.
There were glow lights all over the audience tonight and Q was teary-eyed, and Clay seemed really touched as well.
OMG, I have gone on much too long, but I didn’t want to forget anything!!
Wonderful concert.
Wonderful man.
The guy Clay had been teasing was just having a blast. I asked a white-haired somewhat older usher how she liked the show as I walked out and she said, “It was wonderful, very special,” and grinned just like the rest of us.
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