What The Hell?? Is right......
There is no doubt that Avril Lavigne is a fantastic musician/songwriter/singer, but there was something lacking on her Black Star tour that made for a bit of a disappointing show. From my experience at Avril's previous tour, The Best Damn Thing Tour, I can honestly say that this show was not very good for a few reasons. The first being that I had purchased VIP tickets which from previous experiences meant arriving early, crowd free merchandise shopping, food provided and a meet and greet with Avril herself (I'm talking photo opportunity and autographs). This time however, we arrived 4 hours before her show, had a crowd free merchandise shopping window of 30 mins and then were shown to our standing area for the show. On the stage was a chair and microphone I thought surely Avril would make an appearance to her "little Black Stars" to say a big thank you, but to no avail. For the price of $150, I thought there would be more than what we got. (Didn't even give us any food like last time...) Regardless, we waited for another 2 and a half hours before Avril finally appeared on stage. Her opening acts, Evan Taubenfeld, The Cab and The New Cities were good. Really good. In fact, I'm glad I at least saw them as they somewhat made the night worth it. When Avril FINALLY came on stage there were no jumbo video screens depicting what was going on on stage and if I hadn't been at the very front, I would have missed a lot. Avril herself did not seems to be into the performance as she walked around the stage and made feeble attempts to get the crowd screaming. Compared to The Best Damn Thing tour where she used the whole big stage, had several costume changes, played the piano, drums and guitar as well as danced with back up dancers and smiled a lot, the Black Star tour is a much sleepier rendition of a few songs. Not only did Avril not play most of her new CD, she didn't do a lot of her old songs either. The second song was Sk8er Boi right from the get go with absolutely no build up. She did manage to leave the stage several times for a good 5 mins as her band played some instrumentals of her songs. One would think the breaks would be an understandable costume change, however when Avril returned on stage, she was still wearing the same outfit and seemed to leave for no apparent reason. There was very little crowd interaction and the show itself was only an hour in length. According to some other fans who had seen her Edmonton show, we were "treated" with an extra two more songs during the encore to bring the whole set to about an hour and a half. Her last show was 2 hours and a half. After all was said and done, feeling a little let down, I ventured outside near the tour buses, where time after time Avril has always come out and greeted her fans, in hopes of at least getting a hello. After waiting an hour and 15 mins passed the show end, she did not come out to greet her fans. It was disappointing to say the least. Avril CAN sing and she can sing really well, but there was something really lacking from this show. It didn't leave me feeling I had got my money's worth. I think Avril can do better and should have played in a smaller venue like the Jubilee rather than a rock stage if she wasn't going to rock. I hope her show gets better, but seeing a lot of other reviews, it's doubtful.
Needless to say, I learned a lot from this as a performer myself, what TO do and what NOT to do at shows. Thx Avril.
3/5 rating
3/5 rating
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