Midler all sass, kitschy flair
But 'Brass' tour also lets her emotive, reflective side out for a spell
By DAVE TIANEN
Posted: Dec. 18, 2003
She's a tsunami in curls, the Diva of Decorum . . . the Divine Miss M.

Photo/Rick Wood

Bette Midler remembers to bring her spunk to her "Kiss My Brass" Tour at the Bradley Center on Wednesday.

Bette Midler was back in town at the Bradley Center on Wednesday for a stop on her modestly titled "Kiss My Brass" Tour - and as she always has, she worked her brass off.

Bette floated onto stage from an airborne carousel horse and introduced herself with a greeting that was part Douglas MacArthur/part Divine One: "I have returned! I'm fabulous! Don't I look it? Even I don't know how I do it!"

"Kiss My Brass" is loosely based on a '40s/'50s Coney Island motif, but there's a lot of wiggle room in there. The tangents included a video duet with Mr. Rogers and a video trial presided over by Judge Judy in which Bette was sentenced to apologize to everybody who ever owned or might have owned a TV for her horrible and short-lived sitcom.

That she did with typically kitschy flair, delivering an anguished version of Brenda Lee's "I'm Sorry."

The contrition was short-lived, however. Halfway through, she piped up with, "Maybe my show wasn't must-see TV. Maybe it wasn't might-see TV. But there are worse things on TV. I'm too much of a lady to mention them but . . . Anna Nicole Smith!"

As always, there is a wide swath of vaudeville with Bette. In her milder passages, she rises to the level of moderately bad taste, but as she noted at the beginning about Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera: "I opened the door for tacky singers with bad taste."

Musically, the Brass tour tends to polish the oldies. There are the '60s girl group glories of "Chapel of Love," and on a considerably higher plane, a salute to Rosemary Clooney with "Come On-A My House" and "Tenderly." There were a few surprises. She sang "Shiver Me Timbers" from '76 and dusted off her version of "Skylark" from her way-back second album. It's in pieces like "Tenderly" and "Skylark" where she reminds you that underneath all that brass is a truly commanding and emotive artist. And in a somewhat surprising change of tone, there was a reflective Sept. 11 song called "September."

Of course, some of the old classics were deeply abused. The wheelchair choreography of the mermaid Delores de Lago was revived for a supper club salute called "Fish Tails Over Broadway." In that connection, "West Side Story," "Oklahoma," "Annie" and "All That Jazz" all came in for varying degrees of mistreatment.

All of the major hits were saluted, most of them in a run at the end: "From a Distance," "Wind Beneath My Wings" and "Do You Wanna Dance?" "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" came near the start and served as a convincing display of confidence. Midler sang the song to the accompaniment of old video footage of herself doing the tune on TV in the '70s. The years have truly treated her well.

After opening up with the new tune "Kiss My Brass," she trumpeted, "I'm not retiring and you can't make me!"

After watching her knock herself out for two hours and 45 minutes, it's hard to imagine why anyone would even try.