How do I even start to gather my thoughts post concert? It’s definitely a blast from the past and how much do I miss a1!

The concert started at about 8.35pm and Jeff Timmons was first to go up on stage. Poor guy. He was hit by sound glitches and he gamely went on a capella for a bit before he left the stage for the sound people to get their act together. Jeff was only on stage for like 10 – 15 minutes at that time. The sound system was SO BAD. The crowd even “oi”-ed the sound people on behalf of Jeff.

Furthermore, the stage was crap as well. I’m not even going to try to compare it to the Super Show 4. The backdrop was just a black cloth with a video screen at the back. The lighting was lousy as well. Most if not all the lighting were shining from the back of the stage to the front, hence casting a shadow on the artist’s face when they stood near the edge of the stage.

Anyway, I’ve digressed. Jeff Timmons went off stage and we ended up sitting in the dark for about 10 minutes or so with elevator music while they worked on the sound system. In the time that the stadium was dark, 2 people from the organizers or something? No idea. Were running around the stadium trying to warm up the crowd to cheer and do the Mexican Wave. So lame.

In the end, the crowd decided to entertain themselves by chanting “a1, a1, a1” for a while. Haha. As the crowd got a bit more excitable, someone from the organizer made an apology over the sound system which naturally got booed at by everyone. Seriously, if you want to apologize, you apologize as soon as Jeff went off stage. Not when you feel like it.

Fortunately for a1, when they came on just past 9pm, there were no issues with their sound at all. a1 was the highlight of the night for me. They are so much better as a pop rock band than a boyband. LOL. They reminded us why they no longer dance when they sang “Ready or Not”. Hahaha.

It was also very funny when they asked the audience what song do they want them to sing and Ben was like, “We can’t do Flying Without Wings because that is Westlife” and then he starts to sing the first line to it… “Everybody’s looking for that something….” Wahaha.

Ben Adams, Christian Ingebrigtsen and Mark Read definitely looked very surprised and happy that everyone still remembers how to sing their songs. I was very surprised that I could sing along to every song as well! I swear that I haven’t looked at the lyrics for the song in years! I was definitely very happy to hear “One More Try”, “Ready or Not”, “Take on Me” and “Caught in the Middle”. There were loads more but I can’t remember them. Haha.

In case you were wondering, yes, they did “Like a Rose” and “Everytime”. Haha. How could they not?

a1 actually played for about an hour or a bit more. Don’t know. Wasn’t tracking time by then. 🙂 Then Jeff Timmons came out again to sing “I Do (Cherish You)”, “Invisible Man” and a song from his Chippendale days which I couldn’t catch the title. Honestly, by then the mood was quite wrong and it just didn’t really work. Sorry.

By the time Blue came on stage, I was already a little off. Blue also did get hit by sound issues for a bit. At least for Blue, it wasn’t so bad that they had to stop their performance.

Anyway, I’ve always been a bigger a1 fan than a Blue fan so naturally I wasn’t as high. Blue played for about an hour as well and I also kinda lost track of how many songs they sang or what they sang. Haha. I only remember that they did “All Rise”, “Fly By”, “One Love” and “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word”.

If you had been following me on twitter, you’d know that I was playing around with my phone when Blue was on stage. Haha. I was tweeting and trying to use the Ustream app to stream a song or two of Blue live on stage. Alas, the app kept crashing and I’m not even sure if whatever I was streaming/recording even made it online. Haha.

Oh well, I tried.

The audience also seems to be more familiar with Blue but then again, Blue was in town last year for the ION Anniversary celebrations while a1 was truly missing for 10 years in Singapore. If not for the a1 fans who were there from day 1 resurfacing, a1 would be like a virtual unknown band starting all over again. Pros and cons about that really. The girl beside me was definitely quite clueless about a1 and 98 degrees.

Anyway, I definitely enjoyed myself overall despite the glitches and all the other crap.

Also, if you are reading this, realise that a1 will be doing an autograph signing session at HMV @ 313 Sommerset tomorrow (29 February 2012), 7pm. Not sure of the details of the signing though since a1 were talking about the signing casually as if they were going shopping at HMV and invited everyone along. I actually love how Christian actually said something like, “I would probably just bring a pen along just in case I want to sign something”. LMAO!! What even! Hahaha.

Finally, photos and videos tomorrow or so. I’ma head to bed now.

[Update | 29 February 2012]

Most of my photos came out crap due to the low lighting. Those that came out passable, I’ve put it among the words above. And here are the videos:

Here’s a1 reminding us once again why they stopped dancing:

Here’s Blue with “If You Come Back”. I wanted to record a full song but there wasn’t enough space on my memory card.