the jamie cullum gig... continued

i am still reeling from last night.

they say nothing will be as good as your first concert. for pamela, leisha and me, it was our first concert and it cant possibly get any better than the one we witnessed last night.

and for all that for US$20? to think that people will pay US$50 for the avril lavigne concert at the other end of atlanta, i thought this was definately value for money for real music.

the earlier part of the day was pretty draggy. i had my calc test, which should go fine, and then i had a run of classes til 12, and then another run from 1:30 til 4.

and then i was settling some stuff out when i got a surprise call from leisha and pamela that they were heading to tech. since tech and emory has a joint biomedical engineering program, theres a shuttle running from tech to emory daily, so they got on that.

they came at the right time to see tech at its best atmosphere as people were gearing themselves ready for the battle of the techs, a football game between virginia tech and ourselves - a game i had to miss due to the concert - but a game where we lost it all in the last quarter.

so i showed them around tech for a while and then had to leave for buckhead. to a place i wasnt quite sure where it was, so we had to leave a little early on. the online map said it was only about a mile from the lenox mall, which turned out to be quite inaccurate, we spent a good 30-40 minutes walking there, but i guess that was because we never went to the coca-cola roxy theatre before.

so there was a big sigh of relief when we finally found the place. there was a scare that we might not be able to get the tickets, but that was taken care of. i got myself a copy of his album with a signature for 10 bucks. the US release of 'twentysomething' is different from the one that my dad bought in singapore, plus it included his rendition of pharrell william's 'frontin'' (which he performed superbly later on in the concert) so i thought it was nice.

the theatre had this really old feel to it which made the concept of attending a jazz (well, supposedly) concert much better.

the introducing artist was this ukelele performer from hawaii named jake shimabukuro. he was just awesome strumming his ukelele, he was strumming so fast and with so much passion, you could feel the song. he's really talented with the acoustics of the ukelele, which made a great opening for what was to follow.

so we waited around 15 mins to a great cheering and applause as jamie cullum came on to play 'these are the days' which we went crazy to. and then he played my favourite at the moment, 'twentysomething' when he actually came down to the audience area and started walking around. since i was sitting on the centre aisle, he actually walked right infront of me and it was just awesome to see that while he was performing a song that ive been listening to for the past few days.

i cant recall the exact order of the songs he played, but every one of his performances were great. i truly enjoyed myself throughly and some of the things he did on the stage was just funny as hell.

during one of his songs, he was really getting into the song, he started playing the piano with all his might, then he started slamming his hands, then he took his stool and tried to play the piano with it, then he put that down and started sitting and jumping on it, we were all laughing so hard.

and at the end of one of his other songs ( i think it was what a difference a day made) where it got quite quiet, he started muttering the chorus section of christina aguilera's 'beautiful' in such a mock of the way the song goes, that really cracked everyone up.

there were tons more things that he did, which were all awesome. he would talk in between couple of songs and he was actually pretty funny. in another one of his songs, he came down to the audience area again and this time, i extended my hands out while he was walking and i actually got to shake his hand, which was pretty awesome.

alright, i gotta run to history, but whatever it is, it was clearly one of the best nights ive had in a long time. and to come at the end of a really rough week, it was very welcomed.