Hello everyone,
This is a relatively quiet time for Clay fans, since he is not touring at the moment, nor is he so much in the public eye through his social action commitments. And Clay's new album is only set to be released ... sometime this spring (we await with bated breath!).
So my thoughts return to a lazy warm day last summer when I had the great fortune to attend, for the first time ever (but not the last!), a Clay Aiken concert. It was an incredibly memorable experience, one of the best - if not the best - concerts I have ever attended in my life. And I'm no spring chicken, so I have seen a few.
Clay and his band were most of the way through the "Jukebox Tour" - a retrospective of five decades of rock and pop music. I hesitated for a month or two after the tour was announced (I now can't believe I actually hesitated!) before buying a ticket, arranging to get time off at work that day, reserve a hotel room and get myself to the other city, where the concert was held.
I headed down the highway in the late morning, a sunny, hazy day. A number of hours later, after checking into my hotel room and leaving my overnight bag, I headed out towards the venue on the waterfront, where Clay would be in just a couple of sweet hours. I had bought my ticket online some time before, but since I hadn't purchased it right away when tickets went on sale, it wasn't the best seat - far from it. I intended to upgrade my ticket when I reached the ticket office of the venue, because I really wanted to be as close as possible to the stage. And usually when one is alone, getting one little seat up front is not a problem... Well, congrats to this venue, they made it a problem.
After arriving at the front gate, I asked a young lady at the ticket counter whether I could upgrade my ticket. She told me she was in charge of general tickets for the venue, not Clay Aiken concert tickets (!?). "Go further inside the site, to the Clay Aiken ticket counter", she said. So walk inside I did. And walked, and walked. Never to see another ticket counter. Only a checkpoint, where my backpack was searched, my ticket verified, and I was shooed on past turnstiles, into the venue itself. Once inside, I asked an attendant where the Clay Aiken ticket counter was, since I was told to go there to upgrade my ticket. "You have to go back towards the entry, where the ticket counter is". So back I went - only to be told at the checkpoint "no one leaves here now". When I explained that I just wanted to find the Clay ticket counter to upgrade my ticket: "no exceptions - you may not leave". I was fuming! How can they be so disorganized as to not direct a person to the right place. Sheesh, I was willing to pay top dollar to upgrade my ticket - seems to me they would want to help? And I was annoyed with myself: how come I never saw it on my way in? I am not a distracted person, and on top of things, I was paying special attention because I really wanted to find that counter! It was ridiculous. But after a few moments of internal griping to myself, I decided I was there to see Clay, and if it was to be from afar, so be it. I had brought binoculars, in case! And I learned my lesson for next time. So I went back to my seat, determined to thoroughly enjoy the show.
And did I ever enjoy it! I grinned from ear to ear throughout the almost-four-hour show, so much so that my cheeks were hurting at the end of the evening from so much smiling! What sheer bliss that show was - and what a joy Clay is in person, even more so than when I have "seen" him before (on TV, etc.).
More to come in Part 2...
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