Star 94’s Jingle Jam

Last Thursday Heather and I took Chad to the annual concert put on by Star 94 here in Atlanta.  It is a good chance to get to hear several bands at one time.  This year they had Owl City, Cobra Starship, Leona Lewis, Jordan Sparks, Justin Bieber, and The Fray.  Here are my thoughts from the evening:

1. The Fray, Leona Lewis, and Jordan Sparks were by far the best acts.
2. Justin Bieber sounded horrible.  Not sure if it was the sound system or if he is just not all that great live.  All of the 10 to 16 year old girls in the Gwinnett Center would disagree with me though.  One group even had a sign that said, “Call a doctor, we have Justin Bieber fever”.
3. The concert started at 7:00 and at 11:00 we left 4 songs into the last act… The Fray.  Chad just couldn’t take it any longer.  The problem is the 25+ minutes to change the stage out between acts.  Star 94 needs to come up with a way to smoothly move from act to act with little down time.  Either a stage that rotates so they can set up one band while one is performing or two stages would do the trick.
4. The Gwinnett Center does a great job with traffic.  We arrived at about 6:30 and got right in and parked.  We left early but so did a lot of other people.  We got out and onto 85 pretty quickly.
5. For some reason Cindy, one of the morning show hosts was not there.  Seems like this is a pretty big event on the station’s yearly calendar to have one of your main hosts out.

Overall the concert was good and worth the ticket price (but not the crazy Ticketmaster fees).  Next year is the 10 year anniversary.  At this point I am not sure if I will plan to attend again next year.  It all depends on the lineup I guess.