(I would have posted this earlier but at the place we're staying at we have no internet connection so we had to come home to check our messages...haha. So sorry for the delay)
The concert was AWESOME!
We left later than expected, but that’s ok. We spent our time watching the top 4 Idols episode and making a sign for Emily that said ‘I came all the way from Japan to see the Idols’. I think we left at about 2:44, and got to St. Pete Times Forum at 4:30ish. We poked around for a bit, taking pictures of the American Idol Poptart truck and checking out the merchandise table so we knew what we wanted after the show.
We noticed the buses on the way to the parking lot, so we walked around the arena to the back to check it out. We met some girls wearing lime green, and they stopped us and asked, “Anthony fans?” to which we replied, “Oh yea!” So we found some friends. Haha. We sat out by the buses for a bit, then we noticed Anwar and Nikko walk out of the buses. They went straight into the venue. The girls reported they had already seen Constantine and several others go in and out throughout the day (they had been there since 12.)
Eventually, we abandoned the bus post, because we knew the Idols wouldn’t come out again till after the show. So we headed back to the front to check out the radio station give-aways. We stopped at one station stand and they were doing like, Rap trivia or something, and my dad said they should do Idol trivia. So the girl asked us, “What 80s song did Carrie Underwood remake?” and I instantly replied “Alone.” She said that wasn’t the one she was thinking of. I was dumbfounded. What other song did she do?
My dad asked what she was thinking of, and she replied with “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” and I was like, “Er…that was Jessica Sierra, not Carrie!” And so they gave me a t-shirt. ^.^;
At the other stands, we got free issues of the Idol magazine, which goes for like $7 in stores, and a John Stevens sticker to promote his CD. I also picked up my tour program that Baca gave me $20 for. It’s very nice, but I didn’t get a chance to look at it till after the concert, because we put it in the car with the rest of the stuff we didn’t want to carry into the concert.
It was around 5:40-6:00ish, so we decided to head in. We weren’t sure if we could take the cameras in, so we hid them, as well as the MP3 player (which I stuck down my shirt.) We discovered we could take the cameras in, and the lady didn’t even check my purse, so I would have been able to sneak it in anyway. But we were happy that we could take the camera in, cause that had been worrying me.
So we found our seats, which were pretty wicked. Row 17 on the floor. We wanted to find the bathroom, so we headed out and when we came back, the ticket lady waved us through, saying ‘I remember you two. In fact, you’re the first people I’ve ever remembered.” XD So we felt rather special.
We people-watched and poptart-watched for awhile (Yes, there was a poptart running around the room.) And dad bought us nachos and Emily got cotton candy. We watched the commercials on the big screens, and it was funny, whenever the Idol CD commercial would come on, we’d all scream for the person we liked (well, they only showed Vonzie, Carrie and Bo.) but Carrie got the majority of the screams.
**SPOILERS!**Eventually, the concert started, about 10 minutes late. The beginning was awesome, and I do have a video of Jessica’s entrance. But the beginning was the American Idol theme song clip, followed by clips of the Idols being crazy and such, plus audition clips. So Jess came out and sang “The Boys Are Back In Town”, which was great, because I loved when she sang that on Idol. Then she sang one of her other Idol songs, and at the current moment I don’t remember what it was, but I know it’ll come back to me later.
So Jess was extremely happy to be in her hometown. When she finished up, she introduced Anwar. He did an AWESOME job. He sang “House Is Not A Home” and “What A Wonderful World” (which was the song that made me like him in the first place.) And then, to our surprise, he invited Constantine on stage. Talk about out of order.
Emily was bouncing up and down and screaming when Connie came out, and since I sorta-kinda like him too, (I’m a Con-Fed), I screamed too. ^.^;; He sang some song I don’t recall first (I’ll have to ask Emily, she’ll remember) and then he sang a song from his upcoming CD and also “My Funny Valentine” After his first song, he pulled off his red jacket (Hey, talk about Clay copycat!) and was wearing a navy blue shirt underneath. (*gasp* More Clay copycat-ism!) Oh yea! I remember the song. I think it was “Nights On Broadway”.
Out came Nikko next, and he was incredible. He sang “Part Time Lover”, “Incomplete” and then some Justin Timberlake song that he danced to, and was WICKED. I’ve got video clips of him dancing. He was just great. He even threw his hat to someone in the audience, and held one girl’s hand while singing to her.
Up next was Scotty the Body, who, amazingly, did an alright job. He sang “Against All Odds” and I don’t remember his other song…but then he invited Jessica out to sing “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, which was incredible. They were amazing together, and I have plenty of photos from that song. I was running the MP3 player too, but the battery on the camera died in the middle of the song so I went fishing in my pocket for the other battery and knocked the MP3 player, which turned it off. ._.;
Nadia -the rocker- Turner took the stage next, and she was carrying around the microphone stand like Constantine and Bo. I was like, ‘not you too. X.X’. She also changed clothes on stage. XD Ripped off her dress and there was another one under it. Ha. She sang “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me” and I don’t remember her other two songs. I know the lyrics to the last one, so I should go look that up…
After Nadia was intermission, which lasted around 30 minutes. We spent this time watching the boring commercials AGAIN and throwing around a beach ball that ‘mysteriously’ appeared in the stadium. It later got confiscated by the security guards, as I figured it would be, but before that happened Emily whacked someone with it. XD He was good about it though, and was all ‘good aim!’ and stuff. Heehee.
We knew it would be top 4 performing when intermission was over, and we were excited because Anthony would be coming up soon. When it finally returned, they played more funny clips, then Anwar returned and played the keyboard and sung “Superstition” and did a good job.
Vonzell made her entrance, singing something with Anwar while he played. I don’t remember what they sang, of course. But Anwar left and Vonzell sang “Best Of My Love” and “I’m Every Woman.” She was wearing lime green, so I was all “Haha she’s a Fed!”
Then she introduced….ANTHONY!
I swear, we screamed so loud…and he walked out in his black shirt and blue jeans (I know he wore that on Idol, but I don’t remember which song) and plopped down on the stage and sang “Everytime You Go Away”. He was incredible, of course. He was also VERY fan interactive: blowing kisses, pointing, waving, and speaking to us between shows. I screamed, “I LOVE YOU ANTHONY” but I doubt he heard it. He got to sing his Marc Anthony song, and I was happy for him for that. He wanted to sing it on Idol but never got the chance. Then he sang one of his great songs from Idol, “I Got You.” He headed out into the audience during this song, which was lucky for those up front. It seemed he was gone way too quickly, and he moved around so much that I didn’t get great pictures, but it was amazing seeing him.
He introduced Bo, who came out with “I Don’t Wanna Be”, which had the whole audience singing along. Bo even stopped singing to listen to the audience sing. Then he sang “Vehicle” and of course, I don’t remember that last song. I wasn’t really paying much attention to Bo, because my camera card filled up and I was going through deleting pictures I didn’t need so I could take more. ._.;
Then he introduced…the American Idol. Carrie came out in one of her Idol outfits, the pink plaid and a cowgirl hat. She sang “Sin Wagon” and then OMFG she sang “Alone!” I was very excited. O.o; She even sang the whooole song. Then she invited Bo out and they sang “God Bless The Broken Road” while playing their guitars. I woulda rather seen her sing it with Anthony >.>;; But they were good too. And Carrie was one of them that did wardrobe changes on stage. Between “Sin Wagon” and “Alone” she took off the pink plaid and there was a red shirt underneath. Woot. O.o
So then she sang “Inside Your Heaven” and towards the end the others came out, and then they sang “Somebody To Lean On” which was very nice, but then they left. ;_; People started leaving, but I had the feeling they would do curtain call and at least one more song, which they did. I think they sang two, but I only remember the one. “Rockin In The USA”. (Maybe “Somebody To Lean On” was the other and I just have the song order mixed up. Who knows. X.x) But they did finally leave, sadly.
**END OF SPOILERS**But now we had to head out to the buses, which we did, after my dad found his pop tarts. -.-; (He said he wouldn’t be happy if the POPTARTS Idol concert didn’t have pop tarts. But they did. So he was happy.) And then we stopped by the merch. stand too to get my little Anthony photo thing. Man, I hate concert stands. Takes forever to get waited on. Same thing happened at the Clay concert. Took forever because people always get in front of you and stuff. But I finally got my photo, and we headed out to the back.
There were tons of people. O.O; Even more than when the Claymates hung out at the concert in Clearwater. We were out there for like, an hour, before the Idols finally decided to come out, one by one. Scott came out first, and was the first to leave. We didn’t get his autograph, but we did get pictures. Nadia came out after Scott, and we didn’t catch her either. Then I think Constantine came out, followed by Carrie and Anthony. (We did catch those three, but trust me, more on that later!)
Nikko, Vonzell, Bo followed a bit later, and we did catch Nikko and Vonzell, but not Bo. Nikko was VERY nice and was very interactive with us. He was like, one of the only people I actually saw sign my poster. Most of the time my dad ran around getting the autographs. I never even saw Vonzell sign mine, and didn’t realize she had until later.
Constantine signed Emily’s poster and seemed impressed about how far she came to see them, which was cool. ^.^ I didn’t catch Constantine, but that’s alright. We have pictures of him signing the poster too, and I’ll have to upload those.
So now, Anthony. He signed our stuff after much pleading with him, but we noticed him over where there weren’t many people so we made our way over to him. I wanted his attention for some reason or another, (probably just because he was like, right in front of me. O.o) and so I took off my ATA bracelet and offered it to him, telling him about the ATA and what the bracelets were for as briefly as possible. (Something along the lines of ‘I made a website dedicated to you and we wear these bracelets to identify each other at the concerts.’) I don’t remember his reaction, but Emily says it was something to the effect of ‘wow’. And he seemed flattered. Yay. <3
So then Emily moved in for a hug, so I did too. O.o Dad asked if Anthony would pose for a picture, so we got a picture with him! We were very hyper for the rest of the night. O.o But he smelled really good, we both noticed. Haha. And he carried that bracelet around the whole time he was out there. I have a picture of it.
Jessica and Anwar were the last to come out, and they weren’t allowed to stay for long, so we missed both of them. Jessica was giving out fake flowers to some people, which I thought was cool. She probably loved everyone out there since this WAS Tampa.
So they were all escorted away, so we decided to leave as well. So we bounced back to the parking lot and found the car. In the elevator, we ran into one of the guys who got flowers from Jess. (That’s how I found out they were fake. O.o)
We got to the car and got our stuff out of the truck that we had put in there earlier and plugged in the MP3 player to see how the quality was. Awful. X.X; I’m hoping I can fix it with my sound program, but I probably can’t do much. Here’s to hoping someone else snuck in a DECENT MP3 recorder at some concert.
So we listened to the Idol CD on the way home and looked through the magazines and the program. There are A LOT of Canthony pictures in that program. O.o Hmmmm…
Anyhow, we had an absolute BLAST, and it was an incredible night. We made out pretty well with autographs too. Emily got Constantine, Carrie, Anthony, Vonzell, and Nikko, and I got the latter 4. I had two posters with me, my Top 12 one and my Anthony one. So I have three signatures on one, and one on the other. Those are so going in glass cases in my room. *.* But the concert was incredible, and we all had fun (even my dad!) and it was great we got to meet them. I told the others that we were quite lucky to have gone to the second concert, because the Idols weren’t tired of meeting the fans at the buses yet. Probably, by concert ten, they will be. XD
Anyway, here are the photos:
http://photobucket.com/albums/v486/Kitty17794/Photos/Idols/ and of course, the best photo of all:

Nova, Anthony, and mwah. :grin:
For you Tampa-goers, we did look for you, but unforunatly didn't locate you. Maybe next time!