Adam Lambert at The National

The line outside The National at mid-morning.

Concert going is a commitment. There's serious fans who know how the game works, and then there's the clueless. Like me.

The serious fans began gathering outside The National early in the morning before Adam Lambert's concert on Aug. 27. There were at least 20 in lawn chairs out on the sidewalk when I came to work around 8:30. By mid-afternoon, there was a couple of hundred. By the time I got off work, the line was down the block.

A co-worker wanted to go with me instead of my husband, who would have been more cooperative. She didn't want to stand on line. Our original plan to hang out at Gibson's and go through the get-in-early underground door was nixed because there was a line to get into Gibson's. So it was 7 p.m. before we joined the line, which was then halfway down 8th Street.

Lines really aren't ordeals, at least to me. You have a good time talking to other people, finding out what lengths they have gone to be there. The weather was great. I could have handled a three-hour line. It's like a community and everyone has a story.

A white limousine pulled up and a man got out with a gaggle of older women who looked like they had just come from sitting on a patio. Even with a limo, they had to join the line down on Marshall Street, literally around the block from The National.

After 7, National bouncers came down the line shouting that everyone should have their own ticket in their hand, and we began to move forward. I noticed the man behind me had an Internet print-out. I asked him if that was his ticket. He said he hoped so, because it was all he had. His mother had already been taken inside because she was in a wheelchair. And she was 70 years old!

"This is all she wanted for her birthday," he said. "She wanted to see Adam before she died. She thinks he is the next Elvis."

American Idol Adam -
Not Performing This Year

That comment brings us to the Problem of the Two Adams. There is the openly gay, dangerous, kind-of-goth Adam who first emerged nationally at the American Music Awards. Then there is the American Idol Adam who did indeed look and act like the second coming of Elvis, a clean cut, handsome, possibly straight Adam who sang well-known cover songs in a rich, thrilling voice and wore impeccable, beautiful suits. I suspect many of the old ladies and children in the crowd were expecting to see American Idol Adam, but a smaller, more intense group of old-school, Ann Rice type goths were hip to the real Adam. They were also the ones who knew you had to get there early if you wanted to stand near the stage.

And sure enough, when the show started and hands went up in front, almost all of them were wearing fingerless black gloves.

Considering our position several hundred back in the line, my friend and I were very lucky to find two seats together at all, but they were in the next to the last row in the balcony. It was a nice enough view of the stage if you don't mind that the people on it look an inch tall. Despite buying a ticket and investing half a day to see this concert, my view was 100 times better watching fan videos on YouTube the next day. That made me grumpy. I seldom go to concerts. This time I made an effort, but not enough of an effort to actually make it an unforgettable experience. Next time I will know.

I got even grumpier as the next 90 minutes transpired. It takes a couple of hours to settle in a sold-out house when there's no assigned seats. In the balcony, people did what people do, kept leaving single seats between each group. The ushers had to urge everyone to fill in the empty seats so the latecomers could sit together. Then there was no room to seat even later arrivals together, and they had to be broken up. We heard their displeasure. Then the still later arrivals who expected to sit, not stand, got into insisting-matches with the poor ushers, who had to comb the balcony looking for volunteers to give up their seats and move to the floor. No one did.

The unremarkable Alison Iraheta finished her short opening set and the lights came up for intermission. We got a second wave of people looking for seats in the balcony. These were moms and dads with little kids moving upstairs after realizing during Alison's set that the kids were too short to see the stage. There was no way they were going to successfully push their way through the determined goths in front of the stage so that American Idol Adam could meet their cute kids, who were actually wearing matching, spangled dance recital costumes. American Idol Adam wasn't doing this show anyway.

I don't know where these super late seniors and parents with recital classes in tow ended up sitting, but kudos to the bouncers at The National for handling all the drama without going crazy. And they stopped people from standing along the mid-balcony rail and blocking my view. And thank you to my fellow old people in the balcony for not standing up through the whole show so I didn't have to.

After the audience sang along with "Don't Stop Believing," waving their arms in the air -- so cheesy -- and a snippet of "Billie Jean," the lights finally went down again and there was another extended wait as the audience sang along with Adam's "For Your Entertainment" like a rehearsed chorus. That was a unifying moment that swept away my irritation. His silhouette finally appeared, in voodoo garb, at the top of a little staircase, and I forgot all about how annoyed I was at being sardined with a thousand demanding people.

Singing "Soaked"

His show is well rehearsed and does not go off script. Even when he seems to be talking to the audience, he's actually performing a lead-in to the next song set. Like a stage play, it doesn't stop. They filled in a pause for a costume change with pulsing music and multi-colored lasers bouncing all through The National.

He does songs from his album. One was "Soak," sang alone on the stage, stunning in a long coat, with possibly just keyboards for accompaniment. He is very tall. His voice was so gorgeous. That was the highlight for me, even though it was a song I had not paid much attention to on the CD.

The rest of the time, four dancers gyrating on stage made it far more entertaining a show than just a singer at a mic with a band playing behind him. Adam sang, he danced, he changed outfits. He was tall. He kissed his guitar player. He was fab. Yes, he is the next Elvis, and the next Liberace, and the next Michael Jackson, and the next Liza Minnelli.

Concerts have changed. Fifteen years ago when I used to attend a dozen a month as a reporter, you had to beg the management to let you bring in a camera, and half the time you were refused. And if you took a camera in anyway, you got ejected. Now there's video cameras all over the room recording the show. I guess they don't even try to ban them. On YouTube, you can follow Adam's concert up and down the United States, and it looks and sounds just like the show at The National. Here's a really good video of my favorite moment from the Knoxville show, uploaded by Needacoke. All her/his videos are good.

The stage door line early in the day.

All day a cluster of 30 or so had stood guard at the stage door on 7th Street, waiting for Adam to go in, and after the show, the crowd had tripled, waiting for him to come out. I could tell from my Twitter feed --- where I followed everyone I could find who said they were going to the Richmond concert -- that he came out about 90 minutes after the show and briefly signed a few autographs before getting on the bus. There were even groupies, but they looked like woeful hookers from the '70s with their spiked heels and micro-mini skirts. Did they really think they had a shot at getting on the bus to give blow jobs? Probably not this night.

Permission to Kill Yourself

In Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, there is a fascinating study about how suicides of prominent personalities set off chain reactions of suicides, as if the first gives permission for the others to do likewise.

I never met or interviewed Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse and wasn't a fan of his music, which I found mumbly. News reports say he shot himself in the heart while drinking with friends after a series of text messages he exchanged with an unknown party upset him.

Going through old interviews with Linkous, I found one where he said he was deeply influenced by the Charlottesville writer Breece D'J Pancake, who shot himself in the head in 1979.

Reading Pancake's biographical notes, I found he, in turn, was a big fan of Phil Ochs, who hanged himself in 1976.

It's like each gave the next one permission. For what? To prove you are artistic, or too deep or troubled for this world, or too romantic a figure? Does this somehow validate your art? What in the world makes you blow yourself away?