#56: Clay's going to sing. Life is good.

[duckyvee]

I thought I would be seeing you in Philly duckie hee.

You never know..... when is your family reunion? You will probably be busy every minute, but if not, we could always hit the Couch Tomato Cafe.

[FearofH2O]

Go for it clazy. I love Asheville . Lots of crafts.

[Clayzy]

Go for it clazy. I love Asheville . Lots of crafts.

Need a car first, unfortunately.

[treenuts]

It is what it is, I am still thrilled that we're getting a tour at all this year, even if Clay doesn't want to admit it yet.

I'm thinking the Summer Intercourse Interlude Tour (tm Simon Renshaw??) is to kill several birds with one stone...so to speak. To test the waters, get him out there to stir up enough interest to possibly get a sponsor for the TnT Tour. This could be a way to see if there is enough interest, whet the appetites of some NJU, keep US a happy for the time being and not lose momentum until he does a full out tour, sell some CD's. AND maybe make some money off of this one to help produce the next tour.

Or I'm completley off my rocker and just giddy with delight that I'm going to actually SEE & HEAR my bf this summer....LIVE!!

AND I FINALLY get to MEET so many of YOU that I have never met before!!!!!

Thanks to my wonderful enablers

Now we just need to plan a get together for the board

[Desertrose]

Not too many going to Asheville? I won a three nights in the NC mountains from the Gala. It said one hour outside Asheville. I'll probably call and make a reservation for it then. Hopefully it's available. Plenty of room if anyone needs a place. But it is pretty secluded and is for nature lovers: biking and hiking or just looking.

I am going to Ashville. There is a train tour one hour and a half from Asheville that goes through the Smokey Mountains. It takes 4 1/2 hours to do this train tour. I love nature, and I love the mountains.

[bottlecap]

[merrieeee]

In case anyone is interested I'm going to Reno! eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Oh well off to (reno) work I go. I'ts a tad busy for me right now! Reno is coming!

I have been soooooo busy I just cannot wait for (Reno) April 10, when I can finally get a day off! Plus it's closer to July...oh did I mention I'M GOING TO RENO?

[Couch Tomato]

Merrieeee, have you decided which show you are going to go to yet?

OT: Bottle, yes Spring is in the air. And yesterday it actually felt like a early summer day yesterday. It was a bittersweet day for me yesterday. My new job is not very far from the area where I grew up. Yesterday I drove over to a BofA in my old neighborhood. The one I used to go to with my very first bank account. It was right across the street from KFC I worked in high school (which is now a IHOP). But the entire neighborhood has changed. There were only three buildings that I recognized -- the bank, a card parler, and a liquor store LOL. Everything else is shiney brand new - the entire city almost regentrified. But I love the changes. Pixar owns a big chunk of space. Hell even our favorite fan club has its home in Emeryville. I grew up in Oakland but half my block was Emeryville so that's how close. Anyway, as I was driving back to work I passed The Boys and Girls Club which made me look down that block when I drove through the intersection and I could see a Baptist Church. My best friend growing up used to frequent both places. We met in 6th grade and were inseperable even to our first years in college where we lived together. But we split up for sophmore year becasue I went ot USC and she went to UCLA and we both needed to be closer to our schools. Anyway she was all over my mind yesterday and as it so happens it was also her birthday. She was killed about 20 years ago. Many of the people I grew up with got swept away in the crack epidemic and she was an ultimate victim. Last night I pulled out some pictures of us back when we had not a care in the world.

[merrieeee]

Hey couchie, nice of you to ask. I'm thinking about going to Asheville

[aikim]

Cold and rainy here this morning; kind of day you just want to pull the covers over your head and go back to sleep! At least it is Saturday and I don't have to go out for anything.

1 Day until The First Day of Spring!:glasses:

72 Days until June 1 and The New CD! :04:

Clay addresses The Key Club Convention in July!

Happy Birthday to all celebrating!

Everyone have a great day!

Kim

[keepingfaith]

And yesterday it actually felt like a early summer day yesterday.

Wasn't it Mark Twain who said, 'the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco?'

Anyway she was all over my mind yesterday and as it so happens it was also her birthday. She was killed about 20 years ago. Many of the people I grew up with got swept away in the crack epidemic and she was an ultimate victim. Last night I pulled out some pictures of us back when we had not a care in the world.

I can relate. I went to a new school in the 4th grade and the girl who befriended me on my first day became my best friend for life. We were inseparable. Her birthday was January 8th, and every year she reminded me that she shared a birthday with Elvis Presley. Beth died suddenly with meningitis a month into our senior year in high school. The annual news reports of the anniversary of "Elvis's birthday" always stop me in my tracks.

[liney23]

In case anyone is interested I'm going to Reno! eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Oh well off to (reno) work I go. I'ts a tad busy for me right now! Reno is coming!

I have been soooooo busy I just cannot wait for (Reno) April 10, when I can finally get a day off! Plus it's closer to July...oh did I mention I'M GOING TO RENO?

merrieeee.... RENO??? Yay!!!!! Another FCAer I get to meet!!! This is just so exciting!

Merrieeee, have you decided which show you are going to go to yet?

OT: Bottle, yes Spring is in the air. And yesterday it actually felt like a early summer day yesterday. It was a bittersweet day for me yesterday. My new job is not very far from the area where I grew up. Yesterday I drove over to a BofA in my old neighborhood. The one I used to go to with my very first bank account. It was right across the street from KFC I worked in high school (which is now a IHOP). But the entire neighborhood has changed. There were only three buildings that I recognized -- the bank, a card parler, and a liquor store LOL. Everything else is shiney brand new - the entire city almost regentrified. But I love the changes. Pixar owns a big chunk of space. Hell even our favorite fan club has its home in Emeryville. I grew up in Oakland but half my block was Emeryville so that's how close. Anyway, as I was driving back to work I passed The Boys and Girls Club which made me look down that block when I drove through the intersection and I could see a Baptist Church. My best friend growing up used to frequent both places. We met in 6th grade and were inseperable even to our first years in college where we lived together. But we split up for sophmore year becasue I went ot USC and she went to UCLA and we both needed to be closer to our schools. Anyway she was all over my mind yesterday and as it so happens it was also her birthday. She was killed about 20 years ago. Many of the people I grew up with got swept away in the crack epidemic and she was an ultimate victim. Last night I pulled out some pictures of us back when we had not a care in the world.

{{{{{{Couchie}}}}}}

And yesterday it actually felt like a early summer day yesterday.

Wasn't it Mark Twain who said, 'the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco?'

Anyway she was all over my mind yesterday and as it so happens it was also her birthday. She was killed about 20 years ago. Many of the people I grew up with got swept away in the crack epidemic and she was an ultimate victim. Last night I pulled out some pictures of us back when we had not a care in the world.

I can relate. I went to a new school in the 4th grade and the girl who befriended me on my first day became my best friend for life. We were inseparable. Her birthday was January 8th, and every year she reminded me that she shared a birthday with Elvis Presley. Beth died suddenly with meningitis a month into our senior year in high school. The annual news reports of the anniversary of "Elvis's birthday" always stop me in my tracks.

{{{{{{keeping}}}}}}

This week has finally felt like spring down here. We had such a cold winter this year. I've finally put the space heater away till next October.

If Clay was looking for reviews of the PBS taping on the OFC, I wish him luck. It took me two tries to find it in the Party Thread over there.

[jmh123]

Couchie, there's no tragic death in my story, but I can relate to your feelings about the changing landscape of the area where you grew up. Most of you probably don't know that I went to junior high school in downtown Raleigh. Since I moved back to the area I've been to a couple of Clay's galas and even a high school reunion downtown, and never had a moment of recognition because the area has changed so much. Even the streets have changed, same names in most cases, but there's been expansion and rerouting and so on. The Memorial Auditorium has a lot of memories for me, as I used to go see a lot of groups perform there when I was a teenager--Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Four Tops, the Platters, the Drifters, etc., but I didn't really remember anything, if that makes sense. The exterior is, of course, instantly recognizable, but the interior and everything around it has changed. The additions to the sides, with the other theatres, weren't there, and of course the Marriott, the Convention Center, the Sheraton, none of that was there. I was walking downtown to the Courthouse with my brother just a few weeks ago to file some papers related to my mother's estate, reminiscing about the places we used to go as kids, all of which are gone--Hudson Belk, Woolworth's 5 and dime, the S&W cafeteria, and so on. But nothing in the way of a real memory has hit me until I was lurking at CV last week obsessively looking for recaps of the concert and saw this photo taken by Canuck:

OMG, this is my friend Nicky Dombalis's restaurant! We'd occasionally walk there after school to hang out and his mom would feed us something. I really didn't even think of it as a restaurant; it was Nicky's house, so to speak, it was the place to go after school when you were hanging out with him. So, after all this time and all the occasions I've been back to downtown, I finally had a memory!

Ldyjocelyn went with me after the Gala breakfast in October to see this:

It's all that's left of my old junior high. It was in the block where I've drawn the purple box, very near Tir Na Og.

Sometimes I would walk to and from a bus stop by the state capital building, which is still there, and sometimes I would walk home, which was not far, maybe a mile. If I saved the dime from the bus, I could stop by Krispy Kreme and get a donut and a cherry coke on the way home. So there are places that are still there, but most of downtown has changed so drastically it is barely recognizable, and might never have been for me if Canuck hadn't posted a picture of the Mecca.

ETA: I tried to tell my non-fan friend about all this the other night on the phone and he was like, "and your point is?" I have a feeling others are thinking the same thing. The point is, I guess, that Raleigh has changed so much and so much time has passed, that when I go to Raleigh, even when I go downtown, I don't really think of it as the place where I grew up. My junior high was torn down not long after I went there and something else was built on that spot, and even the road it was on was drastically altered at that time. My family moved to a different part of Raleigh halfway through my senior year of high school (and a lot of bad things happened for me and the nation that year), and then I went off to college. So the house my mom lived in never seemed like "home" to me when I went back to visit; it was just the house where she lived. Any memories I did have weren't good, because we moved more or less to get away from some bad stuff, and then I got mono on top of that. And even when I moved back and the Clay fandom brought me back to downtown, it didn't really resonate. I remember that before the first event I went to down there, the first gala in Raleigh, I pulled up a google map and looked up my old house and the route I used to walk, and tried to figure out where my school had been, but when I got downtown it was all pretty alien to me, everything had changed so much. When I was a little kid, we went downtown all the time, it was really a city center, but after that, Raleigh just kept expanding and expanding and expanding, and people went to shopping centers and malls, not to downtown. This event is the first time that I've really started to feel any kind of connection to downtown Raleigh or to growing up in Raleigh. And I guess that's my point.

[Lotus]

There is a certain sadness about not being able to recognize where one grew up. My home from age 10-18 was one my father built on 20 acres of land between Toronto and Oshawa in Ontario. The land was expropriated years ago and a few years ago a highway bypass was built over it. I had such a strange feeling as my brother drove me over the bridge and I could look down on the ravine where we used to play, where we picked hepaticas and violets for our mother's breakfast tray on Mother's Day.

On another note...Amazon.ca does not have Clay's Tried and True but it's amazing how many CDs by other artists have the same name. I was going to order it thru Amazon.com but I balked at having to pay US $20.97 for a 12.99 CD. Crazy..right? coming from someone who just came back from Raleigh.

I was going to ask for someone here to buy one for me but realized that what with the cost of mailing it wouldn't be much less. Also it is 2 discs. I wonder if Deluxe edition means we get video?

[goldarngirl]

There is a certain sadness about not being able to recognize where one grew up. My home from age 10-18 was one my father built on 20 acres of land between Toronto and Oshawa in Ontario. The land was expropriated years ago and a few years ago a highway bypass was built over it. I had such a strange feeling as my brother drove me over the bridge and I could look down on the ravine where we used to play, where we picked hepaticas and violets for our mother's breakfast tray on Mother's Day.

On another note...Amazon.ca does not have Clay's Tried and True but it's amazing how many CDs by other artists have the same name. I was going to order it thru Amazon.com but I balked at having to pay US $20.97 for a 12.99 CD. Crazy..right? coming from someone who just came back from Raleigh.

I was going to ask for someone here to buy one for me but realized that what with the cost of mailing it wouldn't be much less. Also it is 2 discs. I wonder if Deluxe edition means we get video?

Actually Lotus there is a shipping and handling place over the border here where I have had things shipped and can be picked up. I did that for some amazon orders, so you can get free shipping and handling. Just a thought, if a few of us wanted to order and have it shipped there, you can give them all of your information but allow others to pick your stuff up. There might be something similar for you too on that side of the country?

[luckiest1]

I am not in any rush to pre-order the CD. I mean, there is no track list, no album art, we don't know what is going to be included yet. I am happy to wait until closer to the drop date before I worry about it. I generally try to buy a few locally and then maybe order 1 from the US as well.

[duckyvee]

I went ot USC

Hey, I went there for graduate school! When were you there?

[cindilu2]

I'm sitting here thinking about the concert last week. I still haven't gotten over it and I'm not sure I ever will - at least not until I hear it again. I keep asking myself - was it really that good? Could it possibly be as good as I remember it? I start thinking maybe it wasn't, because really - how could it be? I know I tend to see/hear him with blinders on sometimes (I'm like that about people and things I love - sue me) but you know, this time he really was just. that. good. Every time I think about it I get that feeling again - like he slapped me upside my head or something. Swear - it's a physical thing.

He was on fire - and his voice was out of this world. As in other-worldly. As in - WHO IS THIS GUY??? I'll admit to a few niggling fears after some of his vocals at the galas, etc. Not that I ever thought he was 'losing' it - just that he wasn't 100% Clay. Well he's back, and he's 100000000% Clay. Whatever it was he needed to do to get back - he did it in spades (and diamonds, hearts and clubs and the whole damn deck). He had his control back, his vibrato back, his tones (omfg his tones) and his JOY back. He was singing from a place we haven't seen him sing from for a long time. The stage and staging were beautiful - my overwhelming thought throughout it all was finally. Finally he's getting what he deserves - a showcase worthy of The Voice.

I can't stop thinking about Unchained Melody. To me, the first part was more like his demo version (the only Clay song I do NOT have on my player) and I felt a teensy bit of disappointment. And then, of course, he did what Clay does and blew. my. mind. Oh my god. We were waiting for 'that note' and he took 'that note' and set it on fire and used it to light the fuse to THAT NOTE. He literally put me back on my heels - shaking my head and saying what the hell was that??? Did I really just hear that???? It was pure, unadulterated power and it was all Clay - our Clay. The Voice. I honestly wondered if he could ever duplicate it - and then I read later that he did indeed do it (in rehearsal. TWICE). Squeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!! If he can do that I have no fear for him, ever. Because he's not human.

I don't know what else to say - I wasn't close enough to see his facial expressions on stage - but I was near enough to see him talk to the 36-hr bus ride lady - so I can attest that he was beautiful - hair was gorgeous (I'm guessing close to his natural colour - strawberry blond) and he was luminous with happiness and excitement. I hope they can capture a fraction of how much love there was in that room for him - and how much he gave back. If the world at large isn't completely taken with him after this, then I really don't know what to say except, the world is a poorer place for it.

Oh yeah, he really is just. that. good.

[merrieeee]

Oh yeah, he really is just. that. good.

You know I have never doubted that he really is that good and I have always wanted others to see it too. I always felt his immense talent was just being wasted and that one day he would get his due. I really think it is now his time and yes it is about damn time!

[ncgran4clay]

Couchie, there's no tragic death in my story, but I can relate to your feelings about the changing landscape of the area where you grew up. Most of you probably don't know that I went to junior high school in downtown Raleigh. Since I moved back to the area I've been to a couple of Clay's galas and even a high school reunion downtown, and never had a moment of recognition because the area has changed so much. Even the streets have changed, same names in most cases, but there's been expansion and rerouting and so on. The Memorial Auditorium has a lot of memories for me, as I used to go see a lot of groups perform there when I was a teenager--Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Four Tops, the Platters, the Drifters, etc., but I didn't really remember anything, if that makes sense. The exterior is, of course, instantly recognizable, but the interior and everything around it has changed. The additions to the sides, with the other theatres, weren't there, and of course the Marriott, the Convention Center, the Sheraton, none of that was there. I was walking downtown to the Courthouse with my brother just a few weeks ago to file some papers related to my mother's estate, reminiscing about the places we used to go as kids, all of which are gone--Hudson Belk, Woolworth's 5 and dime, the S&W cafeteria, and so on. But nothing in the way of a real memory has hit me until I was lurking at CV last week obsessively looking for recaps of the concert and saw this photo taken by Canuck:

OMG, this is my friend Nicky Dombalis's restaurant! We'd occasionally walk there after school to hang out and his mom would feed us something. I really didn't even think of it as a restaurant; it was Nicky's house, so to speak, it was the place to go after school when you were hanging out with him. So, after all this time and all the occasions I've been back to downtown, I finally had a memory!

Ldyjocelyn went with me after the Gala breakfast in October to see this:

It's all that's left of my old junior high. It was in the block where I've drawn the purple box, very near Tir Na Og.

Sometimes I would walk to and from a bus stop by the state capital building, which is still there, and sometimes I would walk home, which was not far, maybe a mile. If I saved the dime from the bus, I could stop by Krispy Kreme and get a donut and a cherry coke on the way home. So there are places that are still there, but most of downtown has changed so drastically it is barely recognizable, and might never have been for me if Canuck hadn't posted a picture of the Mecca.

ETA: I tried to tell my non-fan friend about all this the other night on the phone and he was like, "and your point is?" I have a feeling others are thinking the same thing. The point is, I guess, that Raleigh has changed so much and so much time has passed, that when I go to Raleigh, even when I go downtown, I don't really think of it as the place where I grew up. My junior high was torn down not long after I went there and something else was built on that spot, and even the road it was on was drastically altered at that time. My family moved to a different part of Raleigh halfway through my senior year of high school (and a lot of bad things happened for me and the nation that year), and then I went off to college. So the house my mom lived in never seemed like "home" to me when I went back to visit; it was just the house where she lived. Any memories I did have weren't good, because we moved more or less to get away from some bad stuff, and then I got mono on top of that. And even when I moved back and the Clay fandom brought me back to downtown, it didn't really resonate. I remember that before the first event I went to down there, the first gala in Raleigh, I pulled up a google map and looked up my old house and the route I used to walk, and tried to figure out where my school had been, but when I got downtown it was all pretty alien to me, everything had changed so much. When I was a little kid, we went downtown all the time, it was really a city center, but after that, Raleigh just kept expanding and expanding and expanding, and people went to shopping centers and malls, not to downtown. This event is the first time that I've really started to feel any kind of connection to downtown Raleigh or to growing up in Raleigh. And I guess that's my point.

I feel the same way. I too grew up in Raleigh. Lived there til I was 12. It is completely unrecognizable to me now.

The place has grown and expanded so much since I lived there that nothing looks the same. There were no beltline's or malls. But I lived there until 1960 so have been gone a long time. I don't feel any connection when I visit. Kinda sad.

[cindilu2]

I do wish he would blog and tell us what he thought about the concert. Was he happy how it all turned out? Were his people happy? Is he glad we all answered his beck and call? I really thought there would be something (like post-Spam debut). He did say he was going to have a few weeks off after it was over. Surely he could spare five minutes and blog? *sigh*

[goldarngirl]

I do wish he would blog and tell us what he thought about the concert. Was he happy how it all turned out? Were his people happy? Is he glad we all answered his beck and call? I really thought there would be something (like post-Spam debut). He did say he was going to have a few weeks off after it was over. Surely he could spare five minutes and blog? *sigh*

Yeah, it would be great. He was online yesterday, I was hoping that he might say he was pleased, maybe 'soon'.

[treenuts]

cindilu, that was beautiful! *sniff*

Maybe he was looking for any reviews of the concert and thought the fans at OFC might have found/posted some. Didn't I read that they had press there? Or was I dreaming that? Anyway, I too am wondering why there haven't been any official type of reports/reviews from last Friday's concert.

[ausdon]

I'm sitting here thinking about the concert last week. I still haven't gotten over it and I'm not sure I ever will - at least not until I hear it again. I keep asking myself - was it really that good? Could it possibly be as good as I remember it? I start thinking maybe it wasn't, because really - how could it be? I know I tend to see/hear him with blinders on sometimes (I'm like that about people and things I love - sue me) but you know, this time he really was just. that. good. Every time I think about it I get that feeling again - like he slapped me upside my head or something. Swear - it's a physical thing.

He was on fire - and his voice was out of this world. As in other-worldly. As in - WHO IS THIS GUY??? I'll admit to a few niggling fears after some of his vocals at the galas, etc. Not that I ever thought he was 'losing' it - just that he wasn't 100% Clay. Well he's back, and he's 100000000% Clay. Whatever it was he needed to do to get back - he did it in spades (and diamonds, hearts and clubs and the whole damn deck). He had his control back, his vibrato back, his tones (omfg his tones) and his JOY back. He was singing from a place we haven't seen him sing from for a long time. The stage and staging were beautiful - my overwhelming thought throughout it all was finally. Finally he's getting what he deserves - a showcase worthy of The Voice.

I can't stop thinking about Unchained Melody. To me, the first part was more like his demo version (the only Clay song I do NOT have on my player) and I felt a teensy bit of disappointment. And then, of course, he did what Clay does and blew. my. mind. Oh my god. We were waiting for 'that note' and he took 'that note' and set it on fire and used it to light the fuse to THAT NOTE. He literally put me back on my heels - shaking my head and saying what the hell was that??? Did I really just hear that???? It was pure, unadulterated power and it was all Clay - our Clay. The Voice. I honestly wondered if he could ever duplicate it - and then I read later that he did indeed do it (in rehearsal. TWICE). Squeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!! If he can do that I have no fear for him, ever. Because he's not human.

I don't know what else to say - I wasn't close enough to see his facial expressions on stage - but I was near enough to see him talk to the 36-hr bus ride lady - so I can attest that he was beautiful - hair was gorgeous (I'm guessing close to his natural colour - strawberry blond) and he was luminous with happiness and excitement. I hope they can capture a fraction of how much love there was in that room for him - and how much he gave back. If the world at large isn't completely taken with him after this, then I really don't know what to say except, the world is a poorer place for it.

Oh yeah, he really is just. that. good.

Lovely Post Cindilu

[Carolina Clay]

I'm knee-deep into basketball. Despite the fact that my team, the Carolina Tar Heels, didn't make the 2010 NCAA Tournament, March Madness has again taken over my life and temporarily bumped Mr. Clay Aiken from my computer and the Carolina On My Mind blog.

Well, not completely. Confirmed Cluben Tour dates/links and a banner/graphic by LovesClaysVoice featured. Meanwhile, I have spent parts of three days watching one game on the TV and one on my laptop. In fact, I have two going right now.

The Heels are in the NIT, and I rushed home from a cantata rehearsal to watch them win their second round game at noon.

Thank you for your Carolina hits and comments.

He was on fire - and his voice was out of this world. As in other-worldly. As in - WHO IS THIS GUY??? I'll admit to a few niggling fears after some of his vocals at the galas, etc. Not that I ever thought he was 'losing' it - just that he wasn't 100% Clay. Well he's back, and he's 100000000% Clay. Whatever it was he needed to do to get back - he did it in spades (and diamonds, hearts and clubs and the whole damn deck). He had his control back, his vibrato back, his tones (omfg his tones) and his JOY back. He was singing from a place we haven't seen him sing from for a long time. The stage and staging were beautiful - my overwhelming thought throughout it all was finally. Finally he's getting what he deserves - a showcase worthy of The Voice.

cindilu2, thank you for sharing your thoughts about Clay on March 12. It is my hope that others will learn he is just.that.good, too.

jmh123, thnx for showing and describing your old stomping grounds. Mine have changed, too.

Have a great weekend!

Caro