Electrolicious

I realize that I never wrote about going to see Justin Timberlake’s Futuresex/Loveshow last weekend …

Ladies and gentlemen, it was awesome. I feel no need to defend my taste in music — all you really need to know is that I’m a huge JT fan, and he’s the only artist I’d pay to see in an arena. I went to the Justified/Stripped show in LA four years ago, and had a great fucking time.

I decided to go all out for the show, buying General Admission tickets despite the obscene cost ($90 after taxes, fees, ass-raping by Ticketmaster, etc). I went with three lady friends, and we did it right by dressing like complete freaks and showing up extra early to rush into GA. That was actually completely unnecessary, since the stage was set up in the round and there was plenty of room. We stood up close for the first couple songs, but the crowd was only about six people deep, and behind them was TONS of dancing space, which was where I spent the bulk of the show.

JT is some of my favorite dancing music, and I shook my shit hard. There was a lot of singing along, a lot of vogueing, much strutting, arm waving, head tossing, booty pumping, “Oh no you diin’t” head waggling and pretty much more ridiculousness than you could ever imagine. Or if you want to try, picture a drag queen peaking on E after a weekend-long meth binge — that was me. You know how you danced around in your bedroom when you were 14, pretending to choreograph your own routines? Imagine that, but 10 times more spastic because I’ve ceased to care how stupid I look as long as I’m having fun and having a peak experience. You would have been embarrassed for me and a little horrified if you’d been there. Let’s just leave it at that and say that I loved every single minute of it.

The best part was how since we were in a relatively small arena and the General Admission wasn’t that packed, we were able to dance that hard so close to the stage. When JT came out to dance in our direction, it was like we were having our own little private rave, just me and JT. Lily and I regretted not bringing hula hoops, because we had the room to ROCK the “what goes around comes back around” shit. And then of course JT would have seen us and taken us out to his tour bus and traded hooping lessons for dance teachings. It would have been rad, but oh well.

Lemme tell ya: dude is a SHOWMAN. Brit’s performance on the VMA’s made it that much clearer how far JT has come. I mean, I’m a fan but I’m not dumb: dude used to be a dancing puppet. Now he’s a singer/songwriter who played piano, guitar and drums while dancing himself into a sweaty pile. There was no lipsyncing. There was much charisma. Dude’s not hot in the face, but damn he can work a crowd.

My biggest disappointment of the show? The fact that Good Charlotte opened. Who thought matching mall-punk with JT would be a good idea? The high school kids loved it, but the combo was such an insult to JT’s more discerning listeners. We like R&B and Timbaland’s dirty hip-hop beats, not lame-ass power-pop pretending to be punk. It was awful. Especially painful since Pink opened the first half of the tour, and I was genuinely excited to see her show. Oh well.

Also, there were not enough dancers in General Admission. People just wanted to stand and scream — the very young woman next to me at the start of the show was overtaken by hysterics, almost sobbing “OHMIGOD OHMIGOD YOU’RE SO TALENTED!!!!” when JT came out. I mean sure: dude’s talented, but you would be too if you stopped screaming and started dancing, little screaming girl. The show definitely needed more dancing freaks. I did my best to take up as much space as possible, but I guess all the other freaks bought seats instead of GA. Sad.

It was pretty fascinating to be around that many people pointing that much desire in the same direction. Can you imagine being the focus of that every night for months on end? The show we caught was their 98th performance in the last 9 months. Seriously: can you imagine that being your life? That’s some hard work.

Anyway, I was deeply satisfied by the show. My dream would be to see him perform in a small club, but realistically there wouldn’t be any room to dance and as good of a show as JT puts on, his music is dance music for me, and I loved that I had so much room to shake it.