Bette Moves Moline
by The Divine Mr. Michael


Photo: BaltoBoy Steve Weiner

The show went pretty smoothly, the audience seemed to really enjoy every
aspect of the show. There were a couple of mistakes that I saw during
the show one was during the Delores Delago routine Bette couldn't get the
balls going right & you could clearly see her mouth a profanity & she
started over & got it right. The second thing that I saw was during Do
You Want To Dance one of the Harletts lights didn't seem to be working but
it was still a beautiful performance anyway.

A large part of the audience seemed to be moved by From a Distance, Wind
Beneath My Wings & The Rose. As I was leaving I heard people saying no
one can sing a ballad like Bette & they are right.

Michael

QCTimes.com
Bawdy, brassy Bette mesmerizes Mark
By David Burke


BaltoBoy Steve Weiner

Despite a 20-minute late start, Bette Midler gave an audience of more than 7,000 one of the most complete entertainment packages — and politically incorrect shows — it’s ever seen.

From big band sass to a played-for-camp Broadway medley to some of her most touching ballads, Midler kept the audience both charmed and laughing at her frequently bawdy humor.

Midler, who turns 59 next month, hasn’t lost a beat in either the songs of her three-decade-plus career or in the sometimes-athletic dance numbers.

Her humor, peppered with salty language, included some Quad-City-centric punchlines — those who paid $183 (a new Mark record) for VIP seats were referred to as “my own little McClellan Heights”; and Midler pondered turning the denizens of Davenport’s Rainbow District loose on John Deere to liven up the color scheme and “shake things up a little bit.”

The rest of her humor alternated between political — she was a strong campaigner for John Kerry — and celeb gossip.

She also poked fun at herself, appearing in a video in front of “Judge Judy” to atone for the sins of her quickly canceled 2000 sitcom, “Bette.” But that sitcom came and went so quickly that audience members gave a silent, “Oh, yeah,” during the piece that was necessary only for a costume change.

Even with all the onstage banter and video pieces, Midler packed two dozen songs into a 21/2-hour-plus show, with a 25-minute intermission.

Midler dynamically belted the classics she revived on her first album, including “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Chapel of Love” and “Friends.” She paid tribute to Rosemary Clooney with two songs from Midler’s newest tribute album to the singer, performing “Hey There” and “Tenderly.”

But Midler’s own hits in the past few decades have seemingly been all ballads, and she closed the show with “From a Distance,” “Do You Wanna Dance,” “Wind Beneath My Wings” and “The Rose.”

In between, she revived her set of extremely blue Sophie Tucker-esque jokes, as well as wheelchair-bound mermaid Delores Delgado, “the toast of Chicago” in a medley of a dozen Broadway songs done tongue-in-cheek, and mostly rewritten for an underwater theme.

The elaborate set was made to look like 19th century Coney Island, with Midler making her first entrance aboard a carousel horse, and later driving a motorized swan during “Chapel of Love” and Busby Berkeley-style choreography — in a wheelchair — during the Delores production.

A 15-piece band, including a nattily dressed seven-man horn section, provided the perfect musical backdrop.

Midler joked throughout the night about the young, wild female singers owing her a debt for doing it all first — but Britney, Christina, Ashlee, et al, could still watch her and learn plenty.