By Che Sullivan
Special to The Chronicle

I refused to think about the Ke$ha show to far in advance to the actual show.

My friends and I arrived during BonJourney, which was pretty good. They were much more entertaining than anyone thought they’d be. The second opener was Sugar Ray, which I was very excited to see and had a great time with, other than Mark McGrath seemingly having a crisis onstage over his youth. Once Ke$ha finally came on, everyone was ready for it.

She entered from backstage through a haze of aggressive smoke and a lively band intro. She wore a costume seemingly made of glitter. Her first song was the namesake of her latest album, Warrior. Her dancers carried a sword in each hand and wore shiny, samurai-esque costumes, which was fun to watch if you could ignore the cultural appropriation. Also during the first half, the dancers each wore an eyeball for a head, Ke$ha’s favorite body part.

Ke$ha’s set was only about an hour long, and was separated into two halves by a long-winded guitar solo (during which she had a costume change).

The second half began with her entering the stage on a sort of steel diamond jungle gym. Ke$ha proceeded to perform “Gold Trans Am” in a lot of denim, bandanas and curiously wide metal abdomens. Soon, the dancers took out electric sanders, handed one to Ke$ha, and they sanded themselves creating sparks. It was a fun and unexpected turn, and things just got crazier from there. Also during this half the dancers dressed in drag, and I was very into it.

At one point Ke$ha said things were “About to get real weird and crazy,” just after which giant inflatable legs blew up on stage right, and a big inflatable pig was blown up on stage left. Soon afterward, glitter and confetti cannons went off, which was to be expected.  They continued for a surprising amount of time through the rest of the show. Generally I found the incessant mentions of glitter in anticipation of Ke$ha deeply annoying, but I ended up loving it once I was there.