Aiken
sticks with stale 'Idol' formula
Clay Aiken
Bank Of America Pavilion, Boston, Massachusetts
August 28, 2005
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in The Boston Globe, August 30, 2005
If you were a newly autonomous artist, recently released from the contract foisted upon you by your American Idol masters and one of the few unqualified successes to come out of Fox’s starmaking machinery, would you stage your summer tour as though it were an amusement park rock ‘n’ roll revue? Clay Aiken did, and his Jukebox Tour, which hit the Bank Of America Pavilion on Sunday, showed all the imagination, professionalism and artistic depth of the cheesy group numbers performed on the show from which he’s supposedly trying to distance himself.
The evening’s tone was set right at the start, as
a jukebox played
Starship’s “We Built This City,” recently named the Worst Song Ever by Blender. As the record started skipping,
Aiken came out dressed as the Fonz and hit the jukebox, at which point
a
backdrop reading “The 50s” unfurled and the band started up. Medley
after
medley followed, as Aiken (with substantial help from backup singers
Quiana Parler,
Angela Fisher and Jacob Luttrell, each of whom enjoyed several
spotlights) sang
the most recognizable parts of hits from each of the last six decades.
Some
strange moments resulted, as when Aiken sang in front of a backdrop
reading “ELVIS”
in huge letters, prompting the question of who exactly the crowd was
supposed
to be applauding.
The Claymates had no doubts themselves, screaming their devotion and making it clear that for many of them, this wasn’t the first show they’d seen on this tour; one couple carried a sign informing the singer and the world that this was their 100th Aiken concert. Aiken acknowledged them and many others from the stage, showing an easy comfort with audience interaction and stage patter, even with such simplistic and moon-eyed commentary like, “The music of the 1960s paints a portrait of lightheartedness and fun.”
Aiken occasionally broke from the medley format to perform an entire song from start to finish, though “Mandy,” “Solitaire” and a surprisingly pretty version of Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” were truer to his middle-of-the-road pop stylings than “When Doves Cry.” By the time he closed with six of his own songs in full and the Claymates responded as though “Invisible” weren’t actually a creepy stalker anthem riddled with logical flaws, Aiken was at least left to sink or swim on his own merits. The rest of the show suggested that you can take the boy out of American Idol, but you can’t take American Idol out of the boy.