Charlotte Was Taken Over By The CIAA!

This Weekend brought the culmination of the CIAA tournament festivities. I could be wrong but I believe Charlotte will be hosting the tournament until 2012 I believe. Well, being the frugal person that I am, I only attended the free stuff, except I scored some tickets to the final basketball game as well.

Well, the CIAA Fan Experience was this past Saturday at the Charlotte Convention Center, which was free to the public. Some of the big sponsors included: Ford Motor Company, Luster Hair Care, Geico, Dirty South Customs, McDonald's, US Navy, Alltel Communications, and Best Buy. For my car buffs, I am going to need for you to go to Ford's website and check out the new Ford 650. They had it on display there, and that piece of metal was a beast for real. (http://www.f650pickups.com/) I also saw my next vehicle, the Ford Expedition, in black, which had me salivating. But has economists are predicting gas prices to finally reach $4 by summer, I may have to rethink that decision. Best Buy had their setup quite nicely with flat-screen plasma and LCD TVs all over the place, and with Wii stations as well.

But, with the overall demographics for the event being very young, I was quite shocked that many of the CIAA schools were absent from the event. This could have been an excellent opportunity for them to showcase their schools to the young folk who may have never heard of say Virginia Union, or Fayetteville State University. Missed opportunity there. (http://www.ciaatournament.org/home). However, there were vendors which gave the parents of these young folk, the opportunity to check their blood pressure, as well as other health screening information that was nice.

Now, to the entertainment portion. I must say that I was presently surprised by some of the performances. When we got there, Lyfe Jennings was finishing up his set, but then Rick Ross came up on the stage. Blah, blah, wonk, wonk....I really wasn't impressed. However, I do like one of his songs which takes the sample from my movie's soundtrack, "Scarface". I think the name of the song from the movie is "Take It To The Limit". But his performance is quite lacking and gave me further reason to give up on hip-hop. (http://www.defjam.com/site/artist_home.php?artist_id=607)

Chrisete Michelle was also there but she was a little uninspired up there. Like, these kids did not pay to see me, so let me give them like 25%. One thing that caught me off guard is that I think Lyfe came strong with a live band whereas Chrisette was using tracks. I don't know I wasn't feeling that at all. I think one of the best performances of the afternoon had to go to Raheem Devaughn. Washington' D.C.'s own did not have a live band, but he did rock the crowd and had the ladies swooning, all the time, he had an onstage artist, painting Raheem. If you haven't got the chance to see him live,I will strongly suggest you do. He will give you hope for R & B music. (http://www.theloveexperience.com/index_main.html)

Tiffany Evans had a short set of I believe 2 songs, but she was setting up the crowd for Mr. Chad "Bow Wow" Moss. I hate to admit this but Bow Wow had the performance of the afternoon. He shut the place down, had those teeny-bopper girls feening, screaming, standing on trash cans, on the shoulders of tired brothers who were ready to go home. I never knew how many hits Bow Wow, but he was doing his thing with flavor and passion, and as a music lover, you would have to give him his props.

I ended the evening with the final CIAA tournament basketball game at Bobcats arena. Older alumni were there, dressed to the nines, with the Bros wearing their frat pins on their suit lapel, and the lovely ladies looked so elegant. Folk with old money was everywhere. The arena cameras flashed on Free and Rosci from BET, as well as Bow Wow who were on the front row. The final game was between Fayetteville State and the hometown Johnson C. Smith. Being a former band head, I was checking out the pep bands, but I think the Golden Bulls band took this one. Their one tuba player was filling up the area quite nicely. I am going to have find him on campus and show him some love from one tuba player to another.

Overall, I had a good time....take it easy

Bass Clef