not dc Talk, but close

Steph and I went to tobyMac's Winter Wonder Slam concert in Lincoln on Thursday. I was way excited--I was never able to see dc Talk live, so I figured seeing tobyMac would be the next best thing. Plus, I really like tobyMac . . .

There were four acts. The first, B.Reith, was quite enjoyable. He sounds remarkably like Jason Mraz. Seriously. At least when he's not rapping. Check out his MySpace page.

Next came Family Force 5. I'm not even going to give you a link--that's how much I hated them. Steph compared their lead singer to a convulsing, dying lizard. The were so loud, and I couldn't understand much of what they were singing. They had this one guy who basically just danced--sometimes, he danced while banging a tambourine, but mainly he just danced. I never actually counted the people on stage, but I wondered if maybe they needed him in order to have five! I went into the concert knowing I probably wouldn't like them, but I had no idea just how much. We sat through their whole set, just like all the "old" people. I texted Melissa, who had seats on the other side of the auditorium, to commiserate. I was pretty sure she was hating them, too. Yup! She was actually standing in the hall, waiting for them to finish!

Relient K was awesome. You know how some bands are great in the studio but terrible live? Relient K is not one of those bands. They sounded exactly like they do on their cds, and they played their biggest hits, which was nice since I don't really know any of their new stuff. My favorite part of their set was when they sang about being on stage after Family Force 5 had to leave--to the tune of Subway's Five Dollar Footlong jingle.

tobyMac. Loud, of course--but I didn't mind so much since I knew all the songs! Have I ever mentioned how much I hate encores? What's their purpose? tobyMac left the stage without singing "Made to Love" . . . so obviously he was going to come back. And he did. Then he did "Jesus Freak," in a nice dc Talk shout out. That was the highlight of the concert for me :-)

I had to smile when the guy right behind us was explaining to his date that tobyMac might do some dc Talk songs because "he used to be in dc Talk." It also made me feel a tad old.