Image: Intuit Dome and Walter P. Moore
It probably wasn’t the first time Bruno Mars (American singer and songwriter) performed his song “Billionaire” in front of a real billionaire.
“Los Angeles Times” said that, but as the pop-soul singer sang about his desire to “buy all the things I never had” shortly after his concert on the night of August 15th to the new Inglewood (United States) Intuit Dome (which opened on August 15th), you couldn’t help but glance at Steve Ballmer who had used his vast wealth to do just that by building a long-awaited home for his beloved National Basketball Association (NBA) team. The Los Angeles Clippers.
Peter Gene Hernandezknown professionally as Bruno Marsis an American singer-songwriter and musician. He is known for his live performances, his retro showmanship, and for his performances in a wide range of musical styles, including pop, rhythm and blues (R&B), funk, soul, reggae, disco, and rock.
Capacity of 18,000 seats Intuit Dome is an indoor arena in Inglewood, California, south of SoFi Stadium (USA). This is the reception area for the The Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The venue opened on August 15th2024.
Image: Intuit Dome and Walter P. Moore
THE The Los Angeles Clippers are an American professional basketball team based in the Greater Los Angeles Area (United States). The Clippers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference. Intuit Dome serves as a training ground.
Steve Ballmer is an American businessman and investor who served as the CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the owner of the The Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is a co-founder of the Ballmer Groupa philanthropic investment company.
“Los Angeles Times” He also said that sitting a few rows back from the stage, in his signature light blue button-down shirt, Ballmer clapped along to Mars’ catchy tune and happily received a round of pats on the back from his friends sitting around him.
August 15th The sold-out show, the first of two at the arena by Mars, served as the grand opening for the Intuit Domea state-of-the-art arena that cost more than $2 billion and will begin hosting the Clippers in October (after years in which the team shared the 20,000-seat capacity of the downtown stadium) Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles with the NBA team Los Angeles Lakers).
Image: Intuit Dome and Walter P. Moore
“All of you, we are part of California history right now,” Mars told an audience that included Jennifer Lopez (American actress and singer), American actors Angela Bassett, Courtney B. Vance, Ashton Kutcher (American actor and film producer) and Simu Liu (Canadian actor), among other celebrities.
As for the openings, there were some difficulties: touted in advance for its high-tech touches, the smartphone entry and facial recognition systems did not work as expected on August 15.th leading to a giant bottleneck at the main entrance as building staff struggled to inspect fans’ digital tickets one by one. The show, which was scheduled for 8 p.m., ultimately began at 9:40 p.m. On social media, concertgoers complained about long lines and a lack of clear signage and reliable Wi-Fi — hardly a tragedy, though embarrassing enough for a tech baron like Ballmer, who made much of his estimated $120 billion fortune as the head of Microsoft.
And yet, if there is one artist who can fix things, it is Bruno Mars.
Performing in the Los Angeles area for the first time since 2018, the 38-year-old singer delivered a two-hour display of the effortless charisma and deep musical craftsmanship that have earned him eight No. 1 singles, 15 Grammy Awards and concerts in not one but two Super Bowl halftime showsWearing a silky red bowling shirt and a neatly trimmed mustache with a strong ’70s Playboy vibe, he led the eight-piece band he calls the Hooligans as a suave combination of James Brown (American singer and dancer), Michael Jackson (American singer-songwriter and dancer), Frank Sinatra (American singer and actor) and Elvis Presley (American singer and actor). (Watching Mars, you’re never far from remembering that he got his start in show business as a diminutive Elvis impersonator in his native Hawaii.)
Mars’ music is a catalogue of enduring styles—rock, pop, R&B, funk, reggae—and he offered bits of each in songs like the sweaty “Calling All My Lovelies,” which featured a long comic moment where he pretended to call a lover on a gold-plated phone, the effervescent “Treasure,” which evoked the glory days of Earth, Wind and Fire, and the swaggering “That’s What I Like,” into which he threw in a little salsa music just to show he could.
Toward the end of the show, he invited American singer-songwriter and actress Lady Gaga (he called her “pop royalty”) to preview their brand new duet “Die With a Smile,” with Mars wearing a cowboy hat as he strummed a guitar and Gaga wearing a giant beehive wig as she played the electric piano.
August 15thth The show proved that while pop music is rapidly evolving these days, Mars’ old-school skills remain valuable. When a fan on the floor needed medical attention at one point, Mars had his band turn into vampires for a few minutes while security guards found the guy and carried him out.
“That’s what professionals do,” he said with a smile as he led the players back to the show.
And what about Intuit? Los Angeles already has many other locations of this size, including the Crypto.com Arenathe capacity of 17,500 The Hollywood Bowl and the capacity of 17,505 Kia Forum Ballmer also owns it and is just a mile from the new building, up Prairie Avenue. Still, the room sounded great on Aug. 15th: Crisp and detailed with less noise than you usually encounter in an arena.
Mars nodded toward the Intuit location as he introduced one of his early hits, “Nothin on You,” which he said contained “the four chords that changed my life.”
“I lived not far from here and I was driving my Honda Accord,” he concludes, a little hazy from the memory. “I’ll never forget that day: I was driving by here and I heard that song on the radio.”
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