Miley Cyrus - American Airlines Center (Dallas, TX)

Months ago, my 5-year-old daughter had purchased tickets for the Miley Cyrus concert in Dallas. Well, she had her mother purchase them. I'm not sure how kids find out about these things, but they do. I can think of nothing that she had looked forward to any more than this. The last time the tour came through she wanted to go, but I think she was only 3 or 4 years old then, and parents have to draw the line somewhere. She even joined some kind of Miley club so that she could get in on a pre-sale to buy even more expensive tickets than usual.

So the show was to be Sunday night, and here she was on Wednesday with the flu, most likely the swine variety. Sure, the CDC tried to get the word out that it should be properly referred to as H1N1 instead of "swine flu", and I think the bacon industry got upset about the whole "swine" part. Not to mention all of the pigs whose feelings were hurt. But let's be honest, it's a losing battle because "swine flu" is just so damn catchy and fun to say.

So it was a race against time to get well before the show. My 7-year-old son asked what would happen if Miley Cyrus had the swine flu. I said she'd probably have to cancel the show and reschedule it for later. He thought it might be nice if we could give Miley Cyrus the swine flu. Not particularly nice, but I could see that his heart was in the right place.

Sunday came and she was feeling better, but just very tired. Doors were open at 5:00pm, with the show starting at 7:00pm. We got to the American Airlines Center at around 6:00pm and found our way to some of the shorter lines. The anti-scalping measures required that you show your credit card before receiving your tickets. We made it into the arena around 10-15 minutes later.

Upon entry, we were met with a personal concierge, complete with mask and gun, who would direct our merchandising activities. First it was $20 for a program, then on to the huge crush of people in front of the main merchandise area. People usually don't like to wait in long lines to be shaken down, but there it was. A few more severely overpriced shirts later and we were left with an armload of stuff that we certainly didn't want to end up on the sticky American Airlines Center floor. There were no free plastic bags to be had, so there went another $20 for a Miley bag. And I thought the robbery had already occurred when the tickets were purchased.

We came upon another lengthy line. At this place you could have a complimentary picture of yourself taken against a green screen and joined with an actual picture of Miley Cyrus to fool your less intelligent friends. We hopped in line and the woman in front of us looked sympathetically at my daughter, who appeared run down and was being carried in my arms. My son discreetly shouted, "SHE'S GOT THE SWINE FLU!!" Nice going. Way to start a stampede of panic. This is why we'll never be able to pull off any "boy in a balloon" type hoax with him. Anyway, back to the line. The setting choices for the "faux-to" were on Miley's tour bus, in her closet, or on stage with her. She wanted to be on the tour bus. The helper tried to persuade her to choose one of the other ones
because they looked more realistic. In an unsurprising move, she stuck with her choice. The picture ended up having a huge Walmart logo on the top of it anyway. So much for the realism. On the way out, you could supply your Facebook login and password and the picture would be posted to your Facebook wall. We gave it a shot. It was simple enough. When I looked later, I tried to click on the picture to see it larger and it directed me to a survey about Walmart clothes. Argh. So much for "complimentary" as well.

On to the show. The opening act, it turns out, is a band that is fronted by Trace Cyrus, Miley's strange and tattooed older brother. He has a low volume, creepy voice. It borders somewhere between Keanu Reeve's Theodore "Ted" Logan and Crispin Glover's George McFly. I could be wrong, but I believe his band was called Wyld Stallyns. And I half expected him at any moment to say, "Hey you! Get your damn hands off of her!"

He wanted to know how all the "ladies" in the house were doing. He's about 20, which by my random observations was not a well represented demographic at the concert. I'd guess a high frequency of below 12-year-olds, and high frequency of over 40-year-olds. Hopefully he likes the older ladies and not the younger ones... My favorite part of the set: "This next song is called 'Japanese Girl'...but you don't have to be Japanese to like it!" Simply genius. I heard "Check this out" so many times that I lost count. We're here, you're kind of loud and hard to ignore (try as I might), so just play your crappy music and we can all be on our way. Ready to "check out" indeed!

And I'm not saying that his act was cliche, but I think I would have needed to take my shoes off to count the number of times each that I heard "Make some noise", "Believe in your dreams", and "My sister is Miley Cyrus". He couldn't believe that his dream had come true and he was actually sharing the stage with Miley Cyrus. Something about hard work, determination...Did I mention that he's Miley Cyrus' brother?

Toward the end, he declared that he had been told not to take his shirt off. By who? Miley? Billy Ray? Good taste? He took it off anyway, revealing his meth-fueled body and a torso full of tattoos. He's got some piercings as well, which provided a relevant platform for "It doesn't matter if you're black, white, Hispanic, or whatever...It's all about having fun!" Didn't he steal that from Martin Luther King, Jr.? Kind of? No? OK. So after all of that, he wiped himself down with a towel and tossed it to a "fan". You could later purchase a shirt that read "I went to Miley Cyrus' concert and all I got was a towel full of her nasty brother's sweat". For a mere $40. I think he ended the set with "San Dimas High School Football Rules!".

It turns out that Trace is her half brother. They have the same mom. So if you start with the assumption that Billy Ray Cyrus has some kind of talent (bear with me here), then maybe it can be passed biologically to Miley. But what does genetic material know about adoption? OK, maybe Billy Ray simply taught Trace everything he knows about music? OK, none of this is helping poor Trace.

So, as Trace Cyrus would (and did, for that matter) say, "Let's get this party started!!!" I wish I could say that Miley Cyrus was terrible and a huge ripoff. OK, maybe huge ripoff is still correct. But let's examine:

First, let's be honest about the fact that she doesn't have the best voice in the world and her music is probably not going to have a long shelf life like, say "Dark Side of the Moon". And this is probably a good thing. Exceptional music is probably wasted on 5-10 year olds. Have you seen them ignore expensive toys and play with the box it came in? How many times has your kid opened a present from last Christmas in October of the next year? We are talking about short attention spans here. But her music can be catchy, there are some recognizable melodies in there, and even some guitars. I find that to be a distinction between her songs and those of the Jonas Brothers, whose existence I have never been able to understand.

Whenever I've seen Miley Cyrus performing live on TV, she has not sounded particularly good. But then again, I've never seen her have to run off stage when the wrong pre-recorded track was played while she was chest bumping another dreadlocked phony, either. Girl, you know it's true. The fact is, she sounded pretty good. And I know this may seem silly, but I am going to go ahead and congratulate her for actually singing. She didn't use the fact that she was running and jumping around on stage as an excuse to lip sync. So, points there. She also initiated very little banter with the crowd. There may have been one time in the middle of the show and that's it. Perhaps there WAS something to be learned from her brother. Half brother. Whatever.

But there was an obvious attempt to entertain and she hit the mark pretty well with the intended demographic. There were flames, a motorcycle, an offroad vehicle of some type, flights over the audience, and some minor stunts. Just about everything was covered outside of an animatronic zombie named "Eddie". There was an obvious commercial for an upcoming movie and a few too many ballads for my kids' taste, but the important thing was that my daughter had a fantastic time (despite exhibiting few vital signs) and I think my son had a good time as well. There was even a guitar solo that piqued his interest. He wanted to know if he could get that on his mp3 player. Probably not, but there's probably some good Angus Young solos out there to be had in mp3 format. I see a six-string, or more likely a five-button in that boy's future.