A Commodores Night

ASSI - The Commodores performed this evening on the Woodrow Wilson Plaza part of the free September concerts presented by DC Grooves. The weather was nice for an outdoor concert in spite the light drizzles that came and went through out the show. The crowd was front and center, many of the folks in attendance rearranged the sitting plans to accommodate front row seating. Tables and chairs were placed to the right of the stage, the middle was reserved standing, and VIP seating was on the left; however, the seating arranged meant changed as the time approached 7 p.m. Evelyn Champagne King opened for the Commodores, the concert was from 7 - 9 p.m., next Friday, September 19th Jon Secada is performing. The commodores performed all the hits that I am familiar to from Sanctified, Too Hot to Trot, to Brick House, they performed for an hour and a half, everyone was literally grooving to every song, including the slow ones. I thoroughly enjoyed the show except when they diverted during Knight Shift and decided to sing a couple of Marvin Gaye tunes, but they made up for it by segueing into Brick House to close out the show. The Commodores arrived in Washington, DC four days ago, and have been busy making rounds at Howard University, Walter Reed Army Medical Center to visit with the wounded soldiers, XM Satellite Radio for interviews, and Horse and Dickey for one of their notable fish sandwiches. Only two of the original founder members currently perform with the Commodores, the third member is a singer from London, England who has stepped into Lionel Richie's role. The three members managed to do a superb job performing all the Commodore hit songs. I arrived early enough to hear and capture the sound check, which provided a glimpse of what was yet to come. I managed to record snippets of each song on my Cannon Powershot SD900 camera so the sound is somewhat distorted, but you can make out the song.