Only a
few belles at this 5-hour ball
KISS 108 Jingle Ball 2004
Tsongas Arena, Lowell, Massachusetts
December 9, 2004
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in The Boston Globe, December 11, 2004
This year’s KISS 108 Jingle Ball was the type of concert where it’s unclear whether it’s the volume of the music or the fans that’ll deafen you. The mostly teenaged, mostly female audience was almost as much a part of the show as any of the performers, screaming its approval loudly and constantly, sending text messages to the video screens flanking the stage and singing along with the videos shown between acts.
The lineup was almost absurdly ambitious in its scope, with 14 acts taking the stage over five and a half hours. The music itself was remarkably varied, covering the hip-hop of the Black Eyed Peas, the acoustic novelty tunes of Bowling For Soup and Frickin’ A (whose “Merry Merry Merry Frickin’ Christmas” managed to pander to the holidays, Red Sox Nation and self-promotion simultaneously), the bland, poppified punk of Simple Plan, the undistinguished singer/songwriter piano ballads of Vanessa Carlton and Gavin DeGraw, the jazzy acoustic pop of John Mayer, the sub-John Mayer pop of Ryan Cabrera and whatever you would call what Gwen Stefani’s playing these days.
Through it all, the show never let up for a second. With the videos, the onstage interview of One Tree Hill heartthrob Tyler Hilton (who, for his part, warbled out a verse of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”), the text messages and the backstage interviews, the Jingle Ball seemed designed to prevent a single moment of dead space. With each act typically performing four songs, just long enough to play their hits (or possibly, in a few cases, hit), the whole show became a repeated loop of instant gratification.
Even still, it wasn’t until two and a half hours into the show that the first substantial act showed up. In a way, the Black Eyed Peas had the optimal spot in the lineup, with the crowd warmed up but not yet exhausted. Like the others, they played their obvious hits, but their backing band pounded like thunder and the audience waved their arms above their heads during “Where Is The Love?” without being asked. Stefani took the stage not long afterwards for an unannounced performance complete with marching band and Harajuku girls, energetically kicking out two songs, including “What You Waiting For?,” before splitting.
Anybody hoping to smirk their way through Ashlee
Simpson’s
performance was in for a disappointment, as her set was shockingly good
despite
an unfortunate bout with a nonworking microphone right at the start
(the sound
crew can be such jokers). The problem solved, she delivered a spirited
and genuine
performance noticeably lacking a “guide vocal” (as verified by the dips
in
volume when she occasionally turned away from the microphone).
Following
Simpson, Christina Milian’s decision to forego any visible musicians or
DJs at
all for her disposably synthetic dance-pop simply seemed imprudent.
John Mayer played next with just his acoustic guitar but seemed distracted and hurried as he went through his three songs. The show ended with Kelly Clarkson, whose six-song set, the longest of the evening, served as a reminder of why so many people voted her to stardom in the first place. She split her songs between her new Breakaway and her debut Thankful, and if she’s still saddled with material to which her voice is clearly superior, she managed to elevate otherwise innocuous pop songs like “Since U Been Gone” well above the level of guilty pleasures. Unfortunately, pockets of the audience interpreted the quiet and gorgeous “Beautiful Disaster,” accompanied only by piano, as a cue to leave. By that time, of course, it was 11:30 on a school night, but after spending so much time with some of the bad and the ugly of contemporary pop radio, it would have been nice to see the good get its due.