Richard Rushfield of the LA Times is in Portland to cover the American Idols Live debut concert in Portland tonight, and he tells a remarkable story of a very invested Idol fan. Security!
One of the group told of the particularly impressive depths to which she had gone to get to see her Idols. If she didn’t seem so nice, shy and non-terrifying, her tale might be a bit more, well, terrifying. As it is, perhaps it can serve as a cautionary tale to Idol security. This young woman admitted in our conversation that she is staying at the same hotel as the Idols. When asked how that happened, she nods and says that it took a lot of work. “Some of the them haven’t been too careful, ” she says. Apparently since they had been in town, one of the Idols linked on twitter to a video he’d made of a few of them hanging out in one of their hotel rooms. The industrious young fan studied the design elements present in the video – the wallpaper, the room furnishings, and went to various Portland hotel websites, studying pictures of their room until she found a match. After which she promptly checked in.
Also, he posts a little bit of a tease about tonight’s show:
At around seven PM the full-dress rehearsal began for a crowd of about 30 people in the giant arena. I am barred from revealing specific details about the show, but can reveal that Idol fans are in for a very different sort of concert than they saw last year. Last year’s show delivered a great many crowd-pleasing moments, but seemed heavy in gigantic anthem arena classic rock vein. This year’s show – from its set to the band warddrobe to the songs – is, like Portland, more low key than in-your-face, but ultimately seems a much more contemporary, cooler shows – with this year’s singers representing the range of current styles that dominate pop radio today, heavily drawing from the alternative music territory that only Brooke and Jason ventured into last year. The entire production – and very especially the group numbers – seems geared towards a much far less schmaltzy, current sound.
Also, some fans sitting outside the arena hoping for a glimpse of the Idols got invited inside to watch the run through…
