People are still streaming in by the time the opening act starts at 19:30. The lawn and regular seats are half full, with the seats starting to fill up shortly before the start since they didn't have to come early to get in line. But then they didn't listen to rehearsals and they chanced not finding any easy parking. The opening acts (two of them) aren't shown on the projection screens. I don't bother standing up to try to watch the far away view, just keep reading and listen.

The first act is Mikaila, some teenage girl singing and dancing to some songs I've never heard before. Strange that most teen pop groups do a lot of dancing on stage. Other music genres don't have synchronized dancing and up tempo action. Anyway, Mikaila does three songs to the cheering crowds. She didn't make much of an impression on me.

The next act are the A-Teens. Crowd goes wild, and even I have heard of them from somewhere. Two guys and two girls do a four song set. Once again lots of synchronized dancing (I do stand up to look occassionally, to make sure I'm not missing anything, but mostly I'm sitting and listening). The sing "Mamma Mia", "Dancing Queen", and two other familiar sounding songs. I think to myself that they sure seem to do a lot of ABBA songs, remade in a more current pop-style (rather than the 70's pop-style). At least the parents are enjoying the songs too. It's only later on when I check out their web site that I find out that A-Teens' first album are 12 ABBA remakes. The second coming of ABBA, that's just weird to me.

After an hour wait, with the crowd growing more and more restless by the minute, Britney finally appears. It's getting dark by now so all the lights are on and the projector is running. Everybody is standing and cheering. She starts out with "Crazy", then thanks the crowd for coming to see her show. Nobody sits down until the end of the show about an hour later.

Britney does a 12-song set with songs from her two albums. There is also one song for the encore, "Oops... I Did It Again". The projection screens are quite nice as you can at least see Britney, though the cameras focus on her so you can't really see the dancers. Many times though they put special effects on screen and they have a nasty habit of cutting out the feed as the song is ending so you can't see what she does at the end of a song. A bit too cute with the camera work.

There are three breaks, giving Britney a chance to change costumes and for the prop people time to change the set. The first break is a little contest where the winner gets to meet Britney. Each contestant does something, with a pre- recorded task given by N'Sync. One had to bark like a dog, another had to sing a bit, I forget what the other two had to do. Audience cheering decides who wins. Britney comes out to shake hands with the winner and take a group shot for posterity. The other breaks are to introduce the band (and they do short solos) and the dancers (who do short solo dance moves).

It was a good concert. Britney sang "Baby One More Time", "Sometimes", "Born to Make You Happy", "From the Bottom of My Broken Heart", "The Beat Goes On" and "Crazy" from her first album; "Oops!...", "Stronger" (my favorite song), "Don't Go Knockin' On My Door", "Satisfaction", "Lucky" from the second album, plus a few more songs that I've forgotten. Add it up and it's more than 12 songs, so I must have miscounted during the concert.

High energy, everbody enjoyed it, good sound system. At the end of the day we had forgotten about the heat and standing in line and were pleased to be jostled by the crowd as we exited the amphitheatre. This was Chris' first concert and he didn't know the encore thing, so I had to stop him from leaving and told him to wait for the encore. A good time had by all.