Akon headlined Harry O's at 427 Main St. Thursday night, for perhaps the biggest musical event of the first night of the Sundance festival.

It was a madhouse outside of the club at 10 p.m., when the show was supposed to start. (Of course, being a hip hop show, performers usually show up about two hours after a show is supposed to start -- if you're lucky.) There were several different lines to get in, with the "VIP" line moving considerably quicker than the line for people who had bought $100 tickets. The people clutching the tickets began chanting, "Let us in" over and over again, to which someone at Harry O's shouted, "That's not going to get you in any quicker."

Outside, there were plenty of scenes of young people shouting at other young people for screwing up their attempts to get on the guest list. It would have amusing to observe, if only it wasn't 0 degrees.

Once inside the club, it was transformed to look like the infamous Club Tao in Las Vegas, with large portraits of poor Chinese people on the walls while four young ladies in bikinis gyrated on top of the bar. Every 20 minutes, some guy would come on stage and yell, "Are you ready to see Akon?!" The crowd, packed in like sardines, would scream back, but nothing would happen.

Akon didn't show up until 1 a.m. Besides him, the only other celebrity in sight was Alex Smith, the former University of Utah quarterback who now plays for the 49ers. He was the first overall pick in the 2005 NFL Draft.

Maroon 5 is scheduled to play Friday night, 50 Cent is scheduled for Saturday (with Paris Hilton) and Sunday night Velvet Revolver is playing. The latter is the only one on sale to the public -- $150 per head. Unless you're Alex Smith.