Not every seat at the Bryce Jordan Center was filled for the Toby Keith concert Saturday night, but once Keith got onto the stage, he did his best to sell out.

The "concert" was more like a 90-minute commercial for Keith's business prospects than a display of live country music. Keith hit the stage after a parade of openers hosted by his own record label, Show Dog Nashville, but not before a pre-recorded video served as his introduction.

The video, which lasted about 15 minutes, essentially served as a string of unfunny jokes and an extended plug for Keith's tour sponsor/sugar daddy, the Ford F-150. The shameless advertising continued into Keith's set, as a Ford truck remained on the stage behind him for the duration of the show.

Recording artists often take heat for "selling out," usually as backlash for becoming better known by the general public. In reality, it never really has much effect on an artist's integrity. But Keith's shameless self-promotion overshadowed his performance, which was uninspired to begin with.

The video that started Keith's portion of the show had more energy in it than concert itself. Keith never got any momentum going, constantly switching between rollicking party songs and lower key ballads. The audience wasn't on the same page as him until about an hour into the set, at which point Keith decided to throw another wrench into his show.

Keith took time out of his ongoing Ford truck commercial to promote his other new business venture, the box office flop Broken Bridges. About halfway through his set, he introduced a three-minute trailer for the film, which interrupted any semblance of momentum he had going. Apparently it's not enough that you have to sit through 20 minutes of trailers before seeing a film in theaters; no, now everyone has to endure them when they go to concerts.

The one advantage that came from Keith's mid-show commercial break was the introduction of Lindsey Haun, who co-starred with Keith in Broken Bridges. Although her performances seemed straight out of American Idol, she did boast a nice set of pipes. Unfortunately, she only participated in two songs before deferring to Keith for the rest of his schlockfest.

The icing on the cake for Keith's irreverent spectacle was his encore, which consisted of the jingoistic flag-waving songs "American Soldier" and "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)." With the Ford truck still prominently displayed behind him, Keith had the gall to sing a song about being a soldier even after calling up three men in uniform to stand on stage behind him. It's respectable that Keith would pay tribute to soldiers, but at the same time, his message loses a lot of credibility when he's doing everything in his power to make an extra buck during the concert. Singing "I don't do it for the money" is a spit in the face to the men fighting for the United States when clearly the only reason you're on stage is for the money.

The pseudo-patriotic spectacle continued when Keith's guitarist played an abbreviated version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" before going into his post-9/11 anthem "The Angry American." Keith sported an acoustic guitar bearing the Stars and Stripes while an animated American flag waved on the screens above the stage. Patriotism is all well and good, but the people who paid more than $50 to see Keith in concert were instead treated to something they could get for free on the Fourth of July.

Of course, it might have been a small price to pay for the mostly over-the-hill audience. They seemed to enjoy pretending to be back in the country, singing and dancing along to the bland, mid-tempo drinking songs. The fact that such a great number of people enjoyed such a purely preposterous performance had me sympathizing with Will Ferrell's Jacobim Mugatu in Zoolander. I felt like I was taking crazy pills.

The crowd may have left the house satisfied with the performance, but Keith did nothing but pander to his sponsors to give them the show. After promoting nothing but Ford F-150s, his new movie and himself, Keith was certainly not the only angry American at the BJC.