What Goes Around ... Comes Around

Sunday night’s Justin Timberlake concert in Charlottesville was like a delayed rite of passage for me — the last concert I’d been to was Michael Bublé with my mother a year ago. And before that? Live — way back in 1997, I believe.

Blame my lack of concert experience on my limited exposure to Top 40 music as a kid. The only “cool” tapes I owned were Tiffany and New Kids on the Block. My parents very much bought into the idea that the media and the music industry were corrupting children’s minds. When my brothers smuggled in a Bobby Brown tape, it was confiscated immediately. Ironically, we rocked Michael Jackson’s Thriller LP on a regular basis.

Don’t fret — I haven’t remained musically sheltered. Thanks to a few trips to Europe, iTunes, friends who burn music for me and my husband, who has some DJ experience under his belt (and a CD collection to prove it), I now embrace all kinds of music. My iPod is home to Common (who's coming to John Paul Jones April 11, by the way), The Killers, Morrissey, The Game, Dust Brothers and Mike Doughty, to name a few. Pop’s represented, too, which brings me to Sunday night’s concert.

Our circulation manager, Portia Zwicker, and I left Richmond for C-ville around 5 p.m. After a quick bite to eat, we headed over to the John Paul Jones Arena, where we saw so many dichotomies, including mini-skirt-wearing UVA girls chugging beer in the parking lot and a mom making sure her “tween” daughter made it safely past the “security” check point.

Pink opened, although, like the T-D’s Melissa Ruggieri, I think she could have easily headlined the evening. She’s got a great voice, and she espouses just enough girl power that non-feminists aren’t turned off.

And then Justin Timberlake came on stage (for a more, er, conclusive play-by-play of the concert, check out the T-D’s blog. With my longstanding love of Michael Jackson, I was mostly impressed with JT’s dance moves.

But the absolute highlight of my evening was a surprise guest — Timbaland. I had a feeling he might show up since he hails from Virginia Beach. Timbaland and his longtime musical partner Magoo were my intro into the world of DJs and hip-hop many years ago. Most recently he’s performed and produced with artists such as JT and Nelly Furtado. I loved his mixes between JT’s sets last night.

So my first pop concert was a lot of fun, but I think I’m going to leave the late nights to those without full-time jobs. Even after countless cups of coffee, I still had a hard time staying awake through the day yesterday, and it pretty much took me all day to write this incoherent post (in between deadline work, of course). And I’m still not 100 percent two days later. The only thing that reels me back from feeling like a total old fart is the fact that the middle school-aged girl who sat next to me started to wane toward the end of the night, too.


Check out another first for me: A downloaded picture from my cell phone. This image is Justin Timberlake, obviously, projected onto a screen on the stage.