Jay Leno starts free Detroit show with slam to City Council

Leno crawls out of bed to do Detroit.

Jay Leno's free concert at the Palace of Auburn Hills was billed as part of his Comedy Stimulus Plan and was extremely well received by the capacity crowd. The audience  was treated to a hot set of funk-pumped music from Detroit's own Sun Messengers before Kid Rock, always an ambassador for the city, came to the stage to introduce Jay.

Leno entered the stage with an Albert Einstein, out of control, bed-head hairdo and showed that he still had his comedy chops by pacing for over an hour firing off material covering everything from cars that run on urine to airlines to manhood.

His opening line got a great response from crowd when he took center stage and yelled, "Thank you Detroit...Oops. I mean, Auburn Hills," an obvious dig to Martha Reeves and the Detroit City Council for whining about the show not being held in the city. (Have they looked around Auburn Hills lately? It's pretty packed with displaced auto-related workers.)

People stood in line on a wintry spring day for over three hours to assure good seats. Leno's plan was to give people in the Detroit area a little break from their woes by providing not only the show, but also free parking and sodas. Originally, show sponsor Pepsi was going to provide the free beverages, but as Jay explained, the Palace is a Coke venue and the situation in the Middle East is nothing compared to the ongoing battle between Coke and Pepsi, Leno quipped. As it turned out Coca Cola handed out coupons for free beverages at the concessions and Pepsi handed out cans of cola as people left the arena.

After his performance, Leno requested that the house lights be brought up and asked how many people were union workers. He thanked them for creating the middle class to a loud ovation. Leno, a classic and new car collector, seems to sincerely feel for the unemployed auto workers and those in related industries. In addition to the free concert for the area, he also recently bought two brand new American made automobiles.

Even though the scheduling of the show did start out with the absurd controversy created by the Detroit City Council not supporting the entire affected region, Jay made the event work.

Now that I think of it, maybe Auburn Hills should be upset that the Final Four was held in Detroit. The city of Detroit doesn't even have a basketball team, but Auburn Hills does. Take that Martha Reeves. I'm really looking forward to that free Vandella's concert.