At the very last minute, I decided to bring my daughter (who readily agreed) see Stacy AF6 in concert again, after the first time at Padang Merdeka on 31st May.

We arrived late (9 something), but luckily:
- there was still space at the car park
- tickets were still on sale. On one side of the ticket, the concert was billed as “KDCA Fundraising Concert 2008″, and on the other, “Stacy Comes Home: KDCA Concert 2008″.
- the hall’s only about half full (I estimate there were 2,000 there)
- I can’t remember if there were more expensive tickets, but you could sit as near as possible to the front of the stage using a RM20 ticket: no barriers were in place
- Stacy has not yet arrived
- just as we sat down, the lady I’ve been waiting for appeared onstage with Adam AF2: Jo-Anna Sue Henley-Rampas, who I thought was one of the best vocalists I have ever heard live back in November 2007. And yes, she impressed again, and to me is a better vocalist than Stacy.

Still, there’s very little fault with Stacy either. Powerful, my favourite kind of voice (rock-friendly, a little gravelly at the higher registers), down-to-earth personality, and a good dancer to boot. Not quite in the same class as Nikki MI, but still very good nonetheless.

Having said that, the organisation of the concert could’ve been much better. For a start, it was quite bizarre watching RTM’s Sabah VFM DJ Louis Chin as one of the MCs, because I’ve never heard him speak in Bahasa Malaysia before (he’s a DJ for the Kadazan segment). In fact, if I’m not mistaken, the other MC (a lady) is also from the Kadazan segment of Sabah VFM.

That took a while to get used to, but then their handling of proceedings left much to be desired. I think concerts like these need hipper people to be MCs. During some parts of the concert they seemed to be lost and didn’t know what to say. Case in point, they announced that a “kejutan” (surprise) was coming, but then the DJ played a birthday song, to which the crowd sang along. So everybody already knew what was ahead, but still the MCs kept repeating the word “kejutan”. The cake itself took much too long to appear. And as cute as it is, I don’t think it’s a good idea to pause a pop concert for that – it disrupted the momentum. If they could make it very quick, it would’ve been ok, but when the MCs started calling for the parents of Stacy to appear onstage, and suddenly a whole bunch of people came up, including the current Unduk Ngadau presenting Stacy with a bouquet, I thought it was going too far.

About birthdays, apparently Stacy’s going to turn 18 soon. That means she was just 17 when she won AF6.

Then the DJs: I always wonder why they never learnt their lesson all these years. It was a karaoke concert, hence the DJs MUST get their song selection and order down pat. But still, they made at least two horrendous mistakes. The first one was right at the beginning – Stacy’s first song: they played the WRONG song – Stacy had to point it out before they stopped it.

The second was one or two songs later during a duet on a ballad:

Stacy and partner were getting into character and singing the opening bars, when the song just… stopped playing!

It was quite a short concert: Stacy appeared 9.18pm and she sang the final song, Aku Stacy accompanied by kids she invited onstage a little after 10pm.

It was over by 10.08pm: 50 minutes. And as usual, no encore, or rather the crowd didn’t demand it.

Still, I had to patiently wait in the stands while my daughter joined throngs of other young fans to lay siege on Stacy backstage. Apparently Stacy gave her a taste of her birthday cake, hugged her and pinched her cheek!

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