Wob Reviews Orlando, Fl July 14th Concert

Having Britney perform in the small city I live in Sweden is a rarity, in fact, it's the kind of stuff that never happens. When Britney came for her World Tour to Sweden, she performed in the two major cities, Gothenburg and Stockholm, so of course, I had to fly up there to not

miss the chance of seeing her live (this was back in November 2000), but what's really worth everything, is seeing her perform live in the country where she comes from, feel the energy of seeing her perform where she laid her first roots in the music industry, Orlando, Florida.

Last night's concert was just so much more than I expected....it is amazing how the 15,000 people that are inside the concert become a completely different audience when the change from 'opening acts' to 'Britney' happens, I just can't explain it. The excitement shown grows exponentially by the second. Orlando has been by far the loudest crowd I have ever shared a concert experience with, or maybe it's just the Britney fans, who scream louder and louder every time Britney puts on a new tour.

I arrived with my concert winners at around 7:30 pm and we entered through the V.I.P area backstage, because they would not allow the limo to enter through the main entrance due to that Nabisco and Samsung had their stands there. We were all very excited as we held on to our front row tickets (and believe me, front row they were). As we walked down and made our way to our seats, one of the opening acts, Luis Fonsi was performing, I honestly did not see what was so special about this artist, his music didn't even touch me in a shallow mode, I personally did not like his music very much. He finished at around 8:25 pm and it was time for Britney to come on stage (or so we thought). But before that happened, the whole audience was offered a extremely long and very boring journey into the world of Pepsi, Nabisco and Samsung through a pre-concert show called 'Britney TV', this lasted for about 30 minutes. The MC and Drummer came on stage wearing a blue jacket that had the Pepsi sign divided into the left and right part of the front of the jacket. He called a little girl up on stage, and asked her to hold the Pepsi bottle up in the air. Then he began talking about Pepsi, and every time he pointed his finger to the bottle, the whole audience had to scream 'Pepsi', similar things were done for Samsung and Nabisco, and T-shirts were thrown to the audience by the MC (Slam) and also Britney's original dancer Andre Fuentes. Trust me, I have never ever seen a crowd so crazy and excited about catching a rolled up Samsung T-shirt which you can get anywhere for less than 10 dollars, but I guess it was part of the whole pre-concert excitement experience. Nevertheless, Pepsi was what definitely stood out as the main sponsor and advertiser as huge projectors projected the Pepsi sign in the walls of the Arena, I'd say each Pepsi sign had a 50 foot radius, they were huge.

After all of this ended, Britney came on stage at about 9:10 PM (concert started at 7:30 PM). I could feel how the excitement and screaming increased as the Dream Within A Dream started out with an amazing intro and an awesome electric guitar solo by Skip (band member). One thing I find important about an amazing concert is the sound quality in the arena, the sound has to be so awesome that it will make you feel the music beating from inside your body, and the TD Waterhouse Centre offered that plus so much more.

The DWAD concert features at least 10 times more pyrotechnics and special effects than Britney's previous 'World Tour' and I'm also talking about explosions and fire fountains shooting up from the stage. Now, when I say explosions and pyrotechnics, I mean seriously advanced ones, they would not only contain light and sound, but also color and shape. One thing I noticed that was never show on the 'HBO Live From Las Vegas' is how the main stage has a circular inclination at the bottom where you see little screens that cover the whole circle, these screens capture about 5-10% of the broadcasted images that are shown in the top monitors. This provided color to the stage depending on what lighting was used and what explosions came out all of a sudden.

Britney.....well, I think I stood 3 feet away from her at several points, and let me tell you, she is shorter than you think, but also, so much more beautiful in person than what you see in pictures. Tonight she had a perfect tan, something that I did not see in other concerts or concert videos, it also seems as if she dyed her hair not so long ago as it seemed to be very blonde tonight. She was smiling, she was energetic, she put her all into the show.

Being there, I was finally able to solve the mystery behind the lip-synching. I saw her lips move as I heard the song play, and what happens is this, she has the live band playing the instrumental of the song, she then has her backup singers, plus just the acapella of the song in question playing, she then has the choice of singing along with it whenever she feels that she can sing without her voice sounding too strained due to the heavy dancing that went on. She sang Oops! I Did It Again, Not A Girl, Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know, Mystic Man and Baby One More Time live.

Tonight Britney sang a brand new song, and I mean a brand new, it wasn't anything we had featured on the site before, but it was all about what the love of her life had done to her, and she explains how she is slowly overcoming the pain but that it's hard to get closure and that everybody needs time. She then sang Mystic Man and then went directly to Not a Girl, Not Yet A Woman.

Just standing there, and listening to her as she sang Not A Girl live, made my eyes teary....I'm standing in Orlando, I'm listening to one of my favorite songs, that I can just like....every time I hear it, I can look back to key moments or things that were happening in my life when I would just go put on that song and it would cheer me up, and just finally being able to fit into a space in time, where I as the fan and she as the artist would stand in the same venue and where she would share this song live and connect with the fan, is probably the biggest satisfaction one can get from her. Just being there is nothing, and I mean nothing compared to what you saw on HBO, there were so many amazing things that HBO just missed out on, but that's understandable since you'd have to have a TV with 4 different angle shots in order to capture everything that is going on in the 4 different sections of the stage (Main stage, Catwalk, Square Stage and Behind the Band stage).

Her dancers were just amazing, they disserve so much more praise than what they have gotten so far, they almost serve as the producers of this broadway-style multi-engineered production. Nancy, one of the dancers played around a little with one of the guys that was standing below the stage taking care of the props, to me it seemed as if both of them knew each other from before, as she sorta smacked him in the head with the scarf she used to dance during 'Don't Let Me The Last To Know', she looked at him kinda funny like, winking at him, and the guy just started laughing and giving the face that in a way described '(LoL, just wait till I get on the phone with you tonight or talk to you later backstage, expect a bootah spank from me in return), so basically this little detail gave that moment a touch that was just real and not staged.

I don't think people really understand the immense amount of work that was made in order to make this amazing production possible, if you imagine the details involved, it would take you years to figure them all out. I saw Johnny Wright standing on the other side inside of the stage, he has WEG based in Orlando, in fact, his Headquarters are just a couple of blocks of the hotel I'm staying at right now.

Britney was so confident in everything she did, she handled every single stage of the concert as someone who did everything she did during her sleep, the dance moves, the facial expressions, the whole 'Staying in Theme' was flawless.

I want to focus now on the 'Britney effect', which is what I like to call it....it's about the girl that was sitting to my left. Now, I just want to point out, that during the DWAD tour, if your ticket says Row 1, it does not mean that you will be the closest to the stage, as the info has been inverted, it's actually the number of your seat that decides how far you are from the stage (this is Floor Level only)...as rows are horizontal and seats are vertical, meaning, they're still facing the original stage of a concert while the DWAD stage makes you have to turn 45 degrees clockwise or anti-clockwise (depending on what side of the stage you're on) from the original standpoint of the seat. So anyways, the girl that was on Seat 1 (Row 1) to my left, I was just watching her move, this girl, was so into every single performance, I could see how she had memorized every single dance move of each performance and was trying to imitate it in the small amount of room that she had where she was standing. Every time she looked at me, she would smile and give me a look that would say 'Hey, I know I'm being a dork, but being able to dance to Britney at the same time she is doing this live is priceless, and nobody will take this feeling nor moment away from me'. I was so amazed by this girl, I could see her way of connecting with Britney at an almost personal level....through the dance, she suddenly became Britney through her.

Every time Britney puts on a show, no matter how much people generalize that she's all about teeny pop, I am saying, it should really be taking SERIOUSLY. I went to Los Angeles in March and saw a Broadway play, now, every time a play carries that title....it's the same thing as you carrying PhD after your name, it's basically the highest possible ranking you can get in your category. The DWAD tour is something that goes way way way beyond Broadway quality, it goes way way way beyond Cirque Du Soleil quality, and it goes way way beyond any possible combinations of rushes, thrills and goose bumps that you can imagine possible to achieve in this planet we call earth.

She disserves a standing ovation for being the amazing performer that she is, this girl has talent to spare when performing, and even though this might sound a little bit off-time, I think she still has way more to offer. If Britney can put on a show like this, plus sing live to all the songs, plus make it a little bit more personal, plus not take away the chance of bringing fans up to the stage, I will tell you this......it will be hard to surpass by any other equally achieving artist.

She's more than you think.....she just doesn't know it yet.

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