FROM CHICAGO TO ATLANTIC CITY
REFLECTIONS ON KISS MY BRASS
Brian Heck, Bettelyrics.com

I'd like to dedicate this review to all those who didn't get to see one of the Kiss My Brass concerts, due to distance, age, lack of funds, medical restraint, or any other imaginable reason. I've decided to encapsulate my experiences here so they can share at least a little bit of the joy I felt.

I've already been called a braggart for daring to attend multiple concerts and then talk about it in front of others less fortunate, and if I have offended anyone, I am truly sorry. I know how it feels when you want something so badly and others have it in abundance. I hope everyone can understand that I am trying to give those people a taste of what it was like, not rub it in their faces. When it comes down to it, I am incredibly stupid for spending over $4000 on tickets for myself and friends. Any rational person would attend one or maybe two concerts. But we're the mega-fans - not always the most rational people. Chalk it up to youthful exuberance if you must. I'm not rich in the slightest - but I'm a young gay man in a big city, so I don't have the expenses of a mortgage or a car or a family. What I do have is an incredible boyfriend who let me charge obscene amounts of money to his credit card and who won't let me forget it a single day until it's all paid back.

When I was in high school I had a good friend named Jamie who also loved Bette. She and I used to sit around and talk about how one day we were going to see her in concert together. I was only 16 when the Experience the Divine tour made its rounds, and without a job couldn't afford to go - or get my parents to give me the $50 for an obstructed view seat. But Jamie and I knew the time would come again, even if we were frightened when Bette said on her Lifetime Intimate Portrait that she thought older performers should "get off the stage" and let the younger acts shine. So when the Divine Miss Millennium tour came to New York City, we were ecstatic. With what very little money we had, Jamie flew out to New York and we sat about as far away from the stage as one can get in Madison Square Garden. She was about an eighth of an inch tall from our perspective, but she still made our hearts beat hard and brought tears to our eyes. I told myself right then that if she ever went on tour again I would take as many of my friends as I could and would pay whatever I had to pay to have the experience of my life.

When the Kiss My Brass tour was announced I had two main objectives: take as many of my friends as I could to see how amazing Bette is live in concert and see the show myself whenever it was "in range." I kept telling myself, this could very well be her last tour. We never know when she's going to decide to pack it in. If this ends up being the last big show and I sat at home even one night when I could have been seeing the woman who makes me so happy, I knew I'd end up regretting it. So, though it took some coaxing, I convinced my boyfriend to let me charge tickets for Chicago, Columbus, St. Louis (all three of which I would see while visiting my friends and family in Illinois), New Year's Eve in Connecticut, Long Island, Philly, and 2 nights at Madison Square Garden. I was excited on two ends. By going home and seeing the midwest shows I could catch the opening of the tour and also share Bette with some of my best friends who I miss so dearly. And back home, I could share it all with my new friends, and see what were sure to be some of the best shows with the hometown crowd.

I flew in to Chicago on the afternoon of the opening concert. My friends Jamie and Kelly drove up to the city with my mother and the four of us had dinner before making our way to the arena. There's nothing like the feeling of walking into that arena and seeing the stage setup for the first time. I knew to expect a "Coney Island theme," but the grand towers framing the stage and the gorgeous boardwalk scene painted on the curtain really took my breath away. Our seats were in the first tier up from the floor in the back. We were far away, but we had a dead-on view of the stage, so we were able to see everything from the best sight lines. Here's a general concert-going tip: If you're overweight, don't go see a show with three other overweight people. I'm often uncomfortable in theatre or arena seats, but being wedged in with others just like me didn't help matters much. In fact, I ripped the pocket on my pants that night because it got caught on the arm of the seat! But enough about my fatness... While I watched the show I was furiously scribbling notes so I could post a comprehensive review and set list. It meant that I didn't fully "experience" the show as much as I would have liked, but I knew I had many more opportunities to do so. Most of all, it was a thrill being there with my mother, and seeing what a great time she had. The best part had to be when Bette told the joke about getting email spam about penis enlargement and my mother turned to me laughing, "I get those all the time!"

The Columbus concert will always stick out in my head as the time we almost missed it. There was a snow storm, see. A bad one. And then there was the six hour drive. And the time difference (Ohio is an hour ahead of Illinois) that I had forgotten about until we were leaving with just enough time to get there. And there was the family problem that my best friend Bahiyyah, who was accompanying me to the concert, had to deal with that made us leave an hour late. I don't know how it happened, but I drove as fast as I could on those slick roads for six hours and we pulled into the parking garage at 8:10. I knew we still had time to make it, and we ran as fast we could out of the garage and down the street, into the arena, up all the stairs, and down to the floor where we took our seats right before the house lights dimmed. I think the urgency of the whole thing made the show that much better. The jokes were great, Bette was at ease and the crowd was eating it all up. It was a shame we had to drive right back home. 12 hours on the road - but for such a good reason. If only it had actually been 12 hours. Thankfully, the snow storm decided not to REALLY kick in until after the show. But when it kicked in, it didn't stop. We forced off the road a few times, and at one point I spent almost an hour walking around a Meijer waiting for the snow to stop or the plows to get out. Eventually, I got behind a car who knew what he was doing and made it into some clearer roads in Indiana. The six hour trip only ended up taking eight and a half hours - much better than I had anticipated.

As I was getting home that morning, the news came on the radio that Sadaam had been captured. When I saw the show in St. Louis, the "dictators are hiding in holes in the ground" jokes had already begun. How's that for expediency? I think that St. Louis ("The gateway to East St. Louis!") was probably the best of three opening shows that I saw. I went with my friend Bill, who was decidedly not a Bette Midler fan before the concert. In fact, I was quite surprised that he wanted to go with me. But he went in with an open mind, and Bette won him over. And it's no wonder. The show was incredible that night. I think that Bette was finally falling into the groove and feeling comfortable with it all she had a LOT of fun on stage. Whenever she would come over to the stage left - the right side of the house - the fans sitting on that side of the stage, one section over from us - went crazy screaming and waving. The first time they did it, she turned around and with a coy smile quickly ran over to the other side of the stage. This happened several times over the course of the evening, and soon she was turning and running before she even reached the end of the stage. She just seemed very at ease. Before singing "The Perfect Kiss" she just started talking to the crowd and telling stories. I think Bette Sussman played the opening chords 9 or 10 times before Miss M finally started singing it. And when she did sing it, it was so beautiful it actually made me cry. Of course, this was soon followed up with When A Man Loves A Woman, which just kept getting better and better. By the end of the night, Bill was officially a fan and "Hey! Bette Midler!" was his new favorite phrase.

I'll take a moment to review these first three shows. It was clear to me from the first night that this was the best tour Bette had ever done. It was certainly the most musical, as I think it had more songs than any other show of hers I had seen. Her voice was top-notch and she looked as beautiful as I had ever seen her (go ahead and compare pictures of KMB to ones from DMM - the change is incredible!). I was most amazed because she sang so many songs that I never thought I would get to hear live: Big Noise From Winnetka, Stuff Like That There, Skylark, The Perfect Kiss, When a Man Loves a Woman, Shiver Me Timbers, Keep On Rockin' . . . they just kept coming and they sounded better than ever. I know there are some who feel a show wouldn't be the same without Delores DeLago, but I for one really hope she hangs up the fishtails. Bette is far too talented to be singing songs in a lounge-singer voice with 87 fish puns thrown into them. It was great the first 4 times, but the girl has seen her day. I would much rather here Bette sing a medley of Broadway songs herself and give it all she had, rather than wrap them into the context of a character. Even Bill, who loved most of the up-tempo stuff, commented that the rest of the show was all glitz and glamour and in comparison the Delores segment seemed like schlock. I'm sure that's partly because the "story" was about a bad show that finally got good, but it's still a good point. There were so many great moments of the show, we need to keep 'em coming! Of course, she worked right back into our hearts with September, From a Distance and Do You Want To Dance. The calypso version on FAD which we heard only in Chicago was quite an interesting take, and I'd be curious to know why it was cut. The encore of White Christmas was an surprisingly moving ending, and made a great capper to a terrific show.

By the time New Year's Eve came along, I was able to start noticing many more intricacies in the show. My favorite "sleuthing" came when she emerges after the Judge Judy clip and sings I'm Sorry. In St. Louis we noticed there was all kinds of stuff falling off of her and we couldn't for the life of us figure out what it was. I eventually caught that at the end of the clip she says, "Apologize? Ha! It'll be a cold day in hell!" Then when the door opens she's dressed with the horns and tail, and people are actually tossing snow on her. You just can't see it unless you're in a spot where you can see closely through that little door! I was also starting to finally figure out a lot of the fish puns in the Delores segment. The NYE show was mostly fun because it was in that casino atmosphere. Everyone there seemed to be having a good time already, and so they really got a kick out of the show. It started very late and felt a little rushed - but you got the feeling that was because it was New Year's Eve! Indeed, they stopped just after "I Like To Be Told" to do the countdown. They put a live feed from Times Square up on the big LCD screens and everyone counted down together, then at midnight they released thousands upon thousands of balloons from the rafters! There were so many balloons you couldn't even walk! People were popping them right and left which made Bette joke, "Hey! I paid for those balloons!" They sang Auld Lang Syne and then went into the finale with Keep On Rockin' and The Rose, then she came back out and did Wind Beneath My Wings and Friends. We really only ended up missing September, From a Distance and Do You Want To Dance? . . . but a little Stay With Me thrown in for the holiday certainly would have made up for it. Oh well.

I'd like to take a moment to clarify some comments I made around this point in the tour. It's a fact, and a known fact, that when a person does the same show over and over, it starts to become rote. Heck, it happens to us at our jobs. When we have to start doing the same tasks repeatedly, our mind kind of goes off and we just manually do what we've always done. I've seen it happen on Broadway many times. I'll go see a show that I love, like Rent, and I can tell that some of the performers just aren't fully invested in the show that evening. Their mind is somewhere else. But the thing is, *I* can tell that because I've seen it many times, but everyone else is easily fooled. Bette is a consummate performer. Anyone catching any one of her shows is sure to have an amazing time. But of course some shows are better than others and on some nights she's feeling it more. When I say that Bette was a little "off" on Long Island, it shouldn't reflect on her skills as a performer or on whether or not the people who attended the show should have had a good time. The show was still brilliant. But she'd been much much better. For a Saturday night, it seemed to me that she was most interested in getting out of there - maybe so she could go back to Manhattan and be with her family. Who knows? My guess is that they had had some meetings and it was decided that the show was running too long and things needed to be tighter. Whatever the reason, there were what I considered to be big cuts. The opening jokes section was cut WAAAAAY down - in fact, I only recall one or two "local jokes." That's How Heartaches Are Made and Come On-A My House were both cut (these songs ended up being a crap shoot for the rest of the tour. Some nights you got 'em, some nights you didn't.). The Perfect Kiss was replaced with I Think It's Going To Rain Today (to my chagrin, but to many people's delight). The Soph bit about dating SpongeBob was shortened and a brief strain of Gypsy's "Some People" was removed. Though it didn't save any time, the video montage that had been playing during the singing of The Rose was cut - probably after some reviewers said they found it distracting. I say it again - the show was still great. In fact, Bette may well be commended for making a much it a much tighter show. But I know there are others like me who like to see the loose, at-ease Bette who takes her time on the stage and gives us a show straight from the heart.

Whatever was on her mind in Long Island that night, it was clearly gone by the time the show rolled in to Philly two weeks later. Though the "tightness" of the show was still there, it was pulled off with much more ease, making it appear much less rushed than it had before. The highlight of the evening was when Bette replaced Come On-A My House with Hey There, and then lost her key a few lines in. She made Miss Sussman stop playing and said, "Oh no! I lost my key!" They she sang, "Lately when I'm in my room" a few times in a few different keys to find it. She turned to the audience and said, "Sorry, it's the first time I'm singing this song. See, even divas fuck up!"

I was so sure that the Saturday night show at Madison Square Garden was going to the best I would see. It was her hometown crowd. The audience was sure to be full of adoring gay men, overseas visitors and celebrities. Unfortunately, it was the one night I had upper upper bowl tickets (I didn't want to get to see the show from as many perspectives as possible). I was a little surprised during the first act that I was actually not enjoying it very much. It wasn't Bette's fault at all. She was clearly giving it everything she had. And SOME of the audience was being very responsive. But, at least where I was sitting, everyone was more interested in having another beer than in enjoying the show. The people sitting behind me were singing along loudly and often incorrectly throughout much of the evening. Thankfully, it wasn't just me. By the end of the night Bette was making comments about men who were only there because their wives had dragged them and how they were sitting with their arms folded across their chests waiting for the night to end. It was funny, but oh so true. I hoped and prayed that the next night would be better.

It had to be, right? Well it was. Right from the beginning my juices started going because I had the best seats out of all my nights: 14th row on the aisle on house left - the side Bette always plays to. As we were waiting for the show to start I was getting more excited by our surroundings. My friend Perry was seated just 2 rows behind me. 1 row behind me was Nigel, a Bette friend from England whom I hadn't seen since 2000 and who I didn't was going to be there! Eventually we noticed that sitting over to our left, in the first section up from the
floor, was Hugh Jackman. And then who comes walking in but Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick and Marc Shaiman. Then we see Toni Basil walking by. I heard that Harvey Fierstein was over on the other side. Boy did I have that Saturday night thing pegged all wrong! By the time the show started, my blood was so pumped that I was leaping out of my seat, yelling and screaming like I never had before. And the rest of the audience was right there with me. It was almost as if they had all been there the night before and wanted to make it up to her. It's certainly not a lie that entertainers perform better when they're
getting a lot of love from the audience, and Bette proved that to us. Every ballad was sweet and gorgeous, brining tears to my eyes. The up-tempo songs had us all bouncing. When A Man Loves A Woman was so so so incredible that my heart was nearly beating out of my chest by the time it was over. This was definitely THE concert to attend. During Do You Want To Dance, a man and a woman came right down front in the center and danced through the whole song. Bette finally saw them at the end and she was so moved. "I've always wanted people to get up and start dancing when I sing that song, and that's the first time it's ever happened." Boy if that isn't the best present you can give your wife, I don't know what is. Even though Hey There and Heartaches had been cut again (probably after the poor response she had gotten the night before), it was without a doubt the best of the 8 concerts I saw.

I knew by this point that she had started scheduling additional dates and that she was going to be coming back to the New York Area in March. But there was no way I could ask my loving boyfriend to charge any more money to his credit card. The funny thing was, after seeing such an incredible show at MSG, I didn't want to take the chance of spoiling it. What if I went again and she wasn't as good? Or the crowd was awful? I wanted this truly divine night to be the one that lived in my head as the ultimate Bette concert.

And then...

Two weeks ago my friend Jude called me from Michigan and left When A Man Loves A Woman on my voicemail. That is all it took. Hearing that one song - the one he knew I would want to hear most of all - I could tell that she wasn't getting any worse, she was only getting better. Even though the sound quality wasn't great, I could clearly hear that she was singing the song even better than I had heard it at MSG. I walked in the house with stars in my eyes, still listening to the song.

To my surprise, Nelson did not greet me with, "NO! You can't go again!" but instead helped me look up the upcoming concert dates. I had been so good about putting it all out of my head that I had missed that the Meadowlands show, which counts as a New York date, was 2 days away. There was no way I could go, I was scheduled to work. But the next week - there it was - Atlantic City. Nelson even went so far as to look it up on Ticketmaster for me to see that it was sold out, and even went to eBay to see what kind of tickets were being offered there.

I kept checking back at Ticketmaster all week, but nothing ever came up. Meanwhile I was listening to that voicemail over and over again, sometimes 4 or 5 times a day. It would make me smile, it would make me cry. I knew that I couldn't miss that last show. So I broke down and bought ridiculously expensive broker tickets - with my OWN money! - and called my friend Ray to say, "We're goin' one more time!"

Unfortunately, that day could have started a little better. It took Ray forever to get through the traffic coming into New York to pick me up and he ended up being over an hour late. Then there was equally as much traffic LEAVING the city (you got 'em coming and going!). We got out of the city at about 6:15 and had to make a 2 and a half hour trip. Needless to say, I drove 90 mph whenever possible! Nervous as could be, we pulled into Atlantic City about 8:15. I knew the concert never started until 8:20, so there was a little hope in my heart. I just had to find the Boardwalk Hall and drop the car off with the valet parking. We followed the directions we had, past the Trump Casino . . . and where it said Boardwalk Hall was there was a huge non-descript building with no entrance. Little did we know that the entrance faced the Boardwalk, not the street, and there were NO SIGNS on the building telling us that's what it was. So we drove down the street a little way until we knew we had gone too far and turned around. On the way back there was a sign reading "Boardwalk Hall" with an arrow to the right . . . but the street was blocked off. So we pulled past it and drove up to the Trump Hotel by the sign that said valet parking and an attendant pointed us to the left. We drove to the left . . . and found that were basically being told to drive away from the hotel. We were over on some side street. I managed to turn around and go back to the sign where they man said, "Are you checking in?" "No, I just need valet parking." "You have to use the self-park down the street to your right." Of course. The parking garage we has passed on our way into town trying to find the quicker alternative. So we go where he tells us and it says the lot is full. We have to drive around to the other side of the building, where it curiously does not say it's full, wait in a huge line, and then pay to drive up to the roof, finding absolutely no spaces along the way. We eventually had to stalk the elevator and follow some people who were leaving just so we could have their space. By this point it was 10 til 9, and we were so late I didn't even care anymore. We still ran as much as we could the two blocks to the Hall, and got into the place right around 9 o'clock, just as the Rush Limbaugh jokes were starting.

As in Columbus, I think the harrowing experience getting there made the concert all that much better. Yes, there were some fuddy-duddies sitting around us, but I heard a LOT of whooping and hollering and cheering and whistling from the crowd, so much so that it made me wonder if they were piping in crowd effects! Bette didn't disappoint, and the money and time I spent on the last-minute trip was well worth it. She was back to her old self, taking her time on the stage, telling as many jokes as she wanted to, and holding the audience in the palm of her hand. The crew even played a few jokes on her. During the Soph segment, she usually pops out of the top of a beach tent and the top of the tent is a hat on her head. This time they attached a wire to it and when she popped up they pulled it right off her head and hovered it there! She cracked, "Bring that back or I'll stop those checks!" The ending was the most touching. She dedicated Wind Beneath My Wings to her entire crew, and her rendition of the song was so sweet and sincere that it actually made me like it. She had the whole audience, and her crew, sing a long with The Rose, and then she brought her whole crew out on stage with her to sing Friends. It was almost sad when, as the curtain was closing, she said, "This is it!"

An amazing thing happened to me on this tour. Something that I didn't think was possible. It actually made me appreciate Bette even more. I had just said to a friend that after hearing her now, with such an incredible voice, it was hard for me to listen to her earlier work because she didn't sound as good. No sooner had I said that then her earlier work started taking on a whole new meaning for me. It no longer mattered how good she sounded - it was all about the passion.

The greatest thing about seeing Bette live is getting to see this passion that she pours into her songs. When she sings it, she means it. Not only was the new and improved When a Man Loves a Woman making me cry, but so was the older more harsh version. Regardless of the quality of her voice, she still put her entire heart and soul into each and every recording, and that is exactly why I love her so much.

9 times was definitely enough, and I sincerely doubt I will ever go this far out to see a Bette tour again. But I certainly got an experience that will last me a lifetime, and I hope I was able to share even some of what I felt with those who never got to experience it. Trust me - if you're a big Bette fan, it's worth it. Go in debt for a few months. You won't regret it later on.

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Richie B., BetteHead Divine!
I will never forget it.. you know
(AC Review 3/20/03)

Photo: BaltoBoy Steve