Photo: BaltoBoy Steve
Midler’s ‘Brass’ act to inaugurate arena
The Divine Miss M to bless Glendale with her cabaret escapism
By Cathalena E. Burch
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Singer, actor and comedian Bette Midler is the perfect artist to open Arizona’s newest concert arena.
On Thursday, she’ll fill the 17,500-seat Glendale Arena – home to the Phoenix Coyotes hockey team – with laughter, tears, applause and the general sense of aloofness you get when you leave your cares at the door and enjoy yourself in the truest sense of the word.
Midler’s Kiss My Brass Tour, which borrows heavily from her cabaret-style shows and minimally from her latest album, “Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook,” will be the first concert at the arena. Other shows already booked into the venue include Britney Spears on March 3, Rod Stewart on March 27 and Sarah McLachlan on July 16.
Kiss My Brass returns Midler to an Arizona stage for the first time since December 1999, when she brought her Millennium Tour to America West Arena. That show brimmed with classic Divine Miss M-isms – biting sarcasm, borderline potty mouth, lavish costumes, wisecracks with a local twist, and a crack band backing her and her famed Harlettes.
Reviews of this outing have have been equally flattering, to say the least:
“Ultimately, the Kiss My Brass show is all about good, old-fashioned, leave-your-troubles-at-the-door entertainment,” gushed the Chicago Tribune. “And that’s something we can all use a little of these days.”
“It was a night of pleasurable escapism that bordered at times on the fantastical,” chimed in the Chicago Daily Herald.
And perhaps the most glowing of all:
“They don’t make ’em like Bette Midler anymore. Actually, maybe they never did. No diva, pop princess or queen of this or queen of that could match Midler for the combination of wit and wisdom, humor and humanity, warmth and wonderful outrageousness that she brings to the stage,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Jon Bream wrote.
Kiss My Brass returns Midler to the rock ‘n’ roll roots she planted with her debut movie, “The Rose.” She’ll also offer us some of her adult contemporary classics and a few selections from the Clooney tribute album.
Before embarking on the tour in December, Midler, 58, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel she was looking forward to facing a live audience.
“I enjoy the crowds,” she said. “I love the sound of the laughter, the applause, the stillness when they’re listening to a ballad.”
