There was a staged car-crash at one corner, a mock-up car wash at another and many dummy road signs (and real barricades) to bar vehicles from entering Armenian Street to gatecrash the Traffic Jam Party.
street party).

A long queue snaking past half of Armenian Street on Sunday, 28 July 2008, had already formed at 6.30pm, 90 minutes before the party was supposed to start. Some said that the queue started as early as 4.30pm.

We grabbed our free food coupons, collected our hotdogs and Foster’s beer, and got on the back of the special media ‘lorry’ where there was an inviting row of cushioned seats. We were promised a better view than the rest of the audience.

The street soon became thronged with bodies as the host, Class 95 FM DJ Glenn Ong geared the audience up for the gig.
Local flavours

Local bands like The Great Spy Experiment and EIC warmed the crowd up before the arrival of the American Idol, with DJ Aldrin spinning tracks in between acts.

While UrbanWire got into the party mood with The Great Spy Experiment displaying their superb guitaring skills, what took our breath away was EIC’s rendition of “I Want To Break Free“, originally sung by the legendary band Queen. Their original numbers, “Television Affair” and “The Falala Song”, were also crowd pleasers.

The bands constantly reminded the audience that Daughtry was “going to be performing soon”.

But just when we were dying from the anticipation of seeing Daughtry, the crew shooed us, together with the other media from the lorry to make way for Strikeforce, a local drum band. We found ourselves jostling with the rest of the concert-goers while trying hard to see the stage over the sea of heads.

Daughtry steals the show

Finally, the man of the hour, Chris Daughtry himself, took over the mic.

The crowd went bonkers.

Daughtry started with “You Don’t Belong”, a new song from his upcoming album, which was followed by sing-a-longs like “Over You”. He encouraged the audience to sing along at the top of their lungs, giving them the microphone repeatedly in between the chorus lines.

Daughtry also belted out a very moving rendition of “What About Now”, which saw the crowd momentarily glazed over with emotion. “It’s Not Over” got the crowd swaying again and we found ourselves singing along loudly to the well-known track (though we were a little out of tune).

The band even covered the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter”. Daughtry followed that up with a solo “Long Way” on his guitar with, another new track from his album.

As the end of the concert drew near, Daughtry tried to get off-stage, without singing his most popular song. The crowd didn’t let him get away with it and he obliged to their encore request for the song, “Home”. It was weird how everyone on Armenian Street practically had the same song in mind when Daughtry asked what song they wanted him to sing.

After “Home”, he ended the night on a high note with “There and Back Again”, which he got the whole street jumping along to.

Aftermath

Though UrbanWire thought that a local band with a refreshing female voice, like that of Shirlyn and the UnXpected, could be invited perform as a refreshing contrast the male rock bands, Traffic Jam was pretty much a success anyway, with the enthusiastic crowd a testimony of how wild Singapore fans are about Daughtry.

The turnout was also good considering that the tickets were only given away with every Sony Ericsson W350i, W580i or W910i Walkman phone purchased.