HP Pavilion At San Jose
February 7, 2004
WOWSERS!!!! That says it all.
Whatever else anyone has to say about the From the opening roar to the closing calls for more, this was a night to laugh and sing and cry and just have a great time with Bette. She sang what she has been singing on the tour. The jokes were some for us at the Shark Tank ( particularly appropriate during the FishTails) and surrounding environs and the rest were the ones you have all read about or heard before. The acoustics at the Tank are lousy ( as I said when the tour was announced) but Bette's sound folks did marvelous things with it. She was in fine form and the audience was full of crazed fans like me. Miss V got to attend her very first live concert ever and was in tears by the time the curtain rang down at the end of The Rose. Bette's voice may have been giving out a bit at the end of the concert and she invited us to join her in singing The Rose. The audience got most of the words and were almost on tune...touched her deeply. This is a must see and if you get the chance do it more than once.... KMB Review: San
Jose Looking like a little girl on a carorsel horse Bette brought the sellout crowd at the HP Pavilion to it's feet. Seated on the 10th row I was able to view the entire spectecale. Starting off with "Kiss My Brass and "Big Noise" she commanded the "Sharks hockey rink".."Stuff Like That There" and "Skylark" followed..That was when I realized why the arena is nicknamed "The Shark Tank". The acoustics are more disigned for Hockey Pucks then Poi Balls and Bette's vocals. Judge Judy/Bette TV segment followed..."I'm Sorry", and "Theme from Bette", ("nobody loves me but the jews")of cause hit a cord w/everyone in the crowd, ending with "Friends" Later, in the second act, in true style (w/ some imput from me), Delores the mermaid referred to "The Shark Tank" as only a mermaid/Bette could. Giving back what the acoustics had taken away from the diva. The jokes were endless and hysterical sending up everyone from Bush to Larry Elison (who lives in the south bay-silcon valley)..Bette could not resist defining silcon and silacone...Janet and her costume malfunctions, hello! She did a wonderful "Come On to My House" and "Hey There" but still no "Mambo Italiano". Do have to wait until Bette hits the tents in the summer? Next up was "Chapel of Love", riding around in a swan, with a backdrop screen showing "hollywood breeding breakups". Updated constantly, JLo was represented multiple times. Then the pretty tents, beach scene, and tons of Soph Jokes..one of which "I like to refer as the "2 O'clock joke" particularly stood up/out with me. Followed in particlular order, "When a man loves a woman", "Keep On Rockin" " I think is gonna rain today", and "Shiver me Timbers'. The horse returns to take Bette back for some rest and intermission. 2nd act Delores on Bway....and she does a great rendition of "I'm telling you i'm not going...from Dreamgirls...as well as sendups of Hello Dolly and Chicago. After the memaid segment, dressed in coutoure, that would make Nicole Kidman envy, Bette is back with the ballads. "Wind Beneath my Wings", "From a Distance" (standard version), Do you wanna Dance (my personal faaaav-or-ite). Mr. Roger tibute, and September (the order of these songs vary) and her commentary on it being the "dead of winter" really hit home (land security) The winter talk lead to summer, ending the show with "The Rose" Sorry if the set list is not complete and slightly out of order, but when you have been a bettehead for 30 years, sometimes 'partimers' sets in.. Rich:>) KMB Review: Over the top and loud was how the divine Bette Midler described herself in a skit during her brilliant, flashy and scathing 2 1/2-hour ``Kiss My Brass'' vaudeville-style show Saturday at San Jose's HP Pavilion. She was just enough of both. Like Janet Jackson, she toned nothing down for the big arena. This was R-rated and bawdy, bolstered by the comedy writing of Bruce Vilanch and Eric Kornfield. She took on sex, celebrities and sex, national politics, and had plenty of local content. Highlights: Busby Berkeley met the gay bathhouses of the 1970s, as she brought back her ``Fish Tales Over Broadway,'' featuring a colorful quartet of ``Harlotte'' mermaids in wheelchairs. She covered hits from ``Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy'' to ``Wind Beneath My Wings,'' to her latest Rosemary Clooney offerings. Local color: ``Nice to be here at the San Jose Arena. No, the Kumquat Arena. The Compaq Arena. The HP Pavilion. This place has been called more names than Larry Ellison.'' The Divine Miss
M lives up to her heavenly moniker Bette Midler stood with her head poking out of the top of a tent. She was wearing the peak like a hat. "The things I do for you," she reminded the audience. She made her entrance floating down to stage riding a carousel horse, waving like a princess, her million-watt smile bordering on maniacal. Her background vocalists were dressed in tutus and tam-o'-shanters. The Divine One herself was wearing a jaunty sailor's suit complete with one of those cute little hats. She sang soaring ballads. She told dirty jokes. She rolled around in a pedal-driven swan car with a personalized license plate reading "Miss M." Back doing what she does best, what only she can do, Bette Midler, the Divine Miss M, was back in town, singing, dancing, making funny on her new "Kiss My Brass" tour before a capacity crowd Saturday at the HP Pavilion in San Jose (she appears Tuesday at the Oakland Arena). Only Bette Midler's sense of the grand and ridiculous can encompass the vast territory reflected by a repertoire that included a heartfelt Hoagy Carmichael's "Skylark," a surprisingly convincing Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman" and a wicked Tom Waits' "Shiver Me Timbers." Her most touching moment, however, came with a video duet with the late children's TV host Fred Rogers, as she sang along on the warm, simple, direct "I Like to Be Told.'' Of course, Dolores the Fish Woman and her three befinned associates charged around on the electric wheelchairs, but choreographer Toni Basil (whose resume goes back to "Shindig'') got the fish out of the chairs, got them flopping around on the stage and had Dolores riding down a golden staircase on a clamshell-shaped elevator chair ("Try this, Cher," she shouted gleefully), only one of a number of eye-popping geegaws from set designer Michael Cotten. Midler manages to convey the intimacy of a cabaret singer in a Broadway theater setting. Performing on a giant proscenium stage built to suggest Coney Island in the 1890s, she was never dwarfed by the extravagant production. She lit up the far reaches of the dark arena with just the saucy glint out of the corner of her eye. The act hasn't changed in years. Not broken. She has, in fact, honed her show into one of show business' all-time classics, something that has more in common with vaudeville and stage acts from before her time than the more rock- oriented performers of her own generation. "You gotta love me," she said. "Who else are you going to love -- Mariah?" She brought the show to a predictable climax with the inevitable sober, highly dramatic versions of "From a Distance," "Do You Wanna Dance" and "The Wind Beneath My Wings," each song something she has managed to turn into a personal trademark. But then, earlier in the evening, this same woman, dressed as a devil with horns and a tail, sang "Nobody But the Jews" -- a song that asks who misses her canceled television series. Nobody was ever any better at ingratiating themselves with an audience. She whipped out a few well-researched local jokes early on ("San Jose Arena? Compaq Center? HP Pavilion? This place has been called more names than Larry Ellison"). She had no less than TV's Judge Judy sentence her (via videotape) to apologize to all television viewers for her failed TV series. She cited one song, "Stuff Like That There," as coming from "my 1992 bomb, 'For the Boys.' " At this point, her aura is golden. She wears it like a halo. There may be better singers than her. There may be funnier comedians. But as an all-around entertainer, onstage in front of an audience, nobody can match Bette Midler. Midler keeps it
timeless and tasteless She casually announces she took a couple of years off for menopause, but her four-year absence from touring may really have been to lick the wounds inflicted by "Bette," her ill-fated autobiographical CBS sitcom. Menopause or not, though, the truth is she can now qualify for AARP membership. But it doesn't matter in the least. Her backup singers, the Harlettes, are new, Bette Midler explains, because only she is ageless. That's an understatement. And she proved it time and again for nearly three hours Saturday in a rollicking, hugely entertaining concert in San Jose's HP Pavilion. It was high energy from the time she arrived on a flying merry-go-round horse (the show has a shoreside amusement park theme) to her encore. Like Mick Jagger and Tina Turner, Midler's driver's license lists her age as "whatever." Midler (OK, she's 58) retains the passion to perform she had more than three decades ago when she was Bathhouse Bette, the singing dynamo in stiletto heels. Her current Kiss My Brass Tour, which resumes Tuesday with a show at the Oakland Coliseum, is a kind of retrospective, with songs and bits from earlier performances, plus a taste of her current CD tribute to Rosemary Clooney, a punch in the eye for CBS, and a touching tribute to the late Mr. (Fred) Rogers. Such an odd array of eclectic ideas is what makes the Divine Miss M unceasingly entertaining, as she minces about the stage in her far-too-high heels. She has turned outrageousness into an art form. While bare breasts at the Super Bowl and the sort of language that once made sailors blush on network television have made Midler's mad oeuvre fairly mainstream, nobody comes close to doing it as well as ol' red hair. Blending silly production numbers with one of the most evocative and beautiful singing voices going, Midler's shows become ventures into the pleasantly bizarre, ranging from revisiting some old tunes like "Chapel of Love," and "Do You Want To Dance" to her non-musical channeling of an elderly woman with a penchant for dirty jokes, a Midler standard that is enormously funny, but could not be replicated in a family newspaper. Her two-song tribute to Clooney, featuring "C'mon To My House," and "Hey There," was well done -- the tunes were performed with enough skill to honor Clooney's memory, but with just enough of a twist (a youngster skipping behind her, licking a candy cane during "C'mon To My House), to make certain you know it is Midler claiming the tunes as her own. Somewhat less successful is her swipe at CBS for the sitcom disaster. She has Judge Judy on video, conducting a hearing between Midler and the CBS eye, who is declared the winner. The judge orders Midler to apologize to everyone who owns a TV set. It's kind of a lame bit, but leads into her singing of, "I'm Sorry," and making another tune a Midler gem. Her video/live tribute to Mr. Rogers is more successful -- essentially she sings along with him on "I Like To Be Told" and thanks him for his years of teaching kindness and understanding. Sadly, this leads to her uncomfortably ill-wrought political talk. She appeared uncomfortable doing it, and, although she punched the right audience buttons, those listening appeared to be interested in having Midler do other things. Like Delores Delago(the toast of Chicago), her familiar mermaid character who rides in an electric wheelchair, is backed by the Harlettes in similar garb and chairs, and turns Broadway into a giant fishpond. Midler has the perfect, belt-'em-out Broadway voice, but until you've heard her do Broadway Delago style, well, it's just downright weird hearing a mermaid singing, "You'll Never Walk Alone." And then, the lyrics to Chicago's "All That Jazz" have been changed to "all that shad," making her Broadway tribute even more fishy. Essentially, what Miss M does is present a one-woman variety show (with a great supporting cast). If you can imagine Mae West, Sophie Tucker and Fanny Brice sharing the same body to perform a wild vaudeville show, then you get the basic idea of what Midler does. She is a one-off delight, a national treasure, and, like she says, ageless. Alameda Times-Star Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - DIVINE has become too small a word to describe Bette Midler. From the release of her first album, "The Divine Miss M," more than 30 years ago, Midler has been earning her self-appointed nickname. At first, Miss M was divine in the campiest sense of the word. As she evolved, succeeded, failed and bounced back too many times to count, Midler emerged as a genuine razzle-dazzle entertainer of the highest order. Nowhere is Midler's divinity more apparent than in her live shows. The stage gives her the freedom to be hilarious, bawdy, sappy, poignant and brave. Whatever else might be going on in her life or career, Midler can stand before an audience and let her superstar radiance go to work. As she approaches 60 (she's 58), you'd think Midler might consider toning down the outrageousness, cleaning up her potty mouth or shuffling the rock songs to the bottom of the pile. One look at the title of Midler's new tour -- "Kiss My Brass" -- and you'll see it's business as usual for the brash Miss M. The tour rolled into San Jose's HP Pavilion on Saturday night and heads north for a stop at the Oakland Arena tonight. Midler has never looked or sounded as good as she does in "Kiss My Brass." She only seems to improve with age, and her comic timing is as sharp as it ever was, which is saying something. With this big, wet smackeroo of a "Kiss," Midler delivers a Broadway-size spectacle masquerading as a pricey concert with a top ticket price of $175. Working with director Richard J. Alexander and choreographer Toni Basil, Midler has concocted a two-act show built on a Coney Island beach oardwalk/amusement park theme.
"I have returned!" Midler shrieks at the top of the show after explaining that she had been away for a few years to "suffer quietly through my menopause." From beneath a head of bouncy Shirley Temple-like curls, Midler boasts: "I'm fabulous! Don't I look it? Even I don't know how I do it." The laughs and the songs continue to roll out for the show's nearly three hours. Musical surprises Of course Midler does all her hits -- "Wind Beneath My Wings," "From a Distance" -- and tells dusty old Sophie Tucker-like jokes. But she also has plenty of surprises. You expect to hear "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" accompanied by three back-up singers known as the Staggering Harlettes. But the appearance of "Stuff Like That There," a big-band gem from the flop movie "For the Boys," is an unexpected delight. It's a thrill to hear old Midler standards like "Chapel of Love" and "Do You Wanna Dance," but even more exciting to hear a "Beaches" soundtrack tune, Randy Newman's "I Think It's Gonna Rain Today." Midler hauls out two cuts -- "Come-on-a-My-House" and "Hey There" -- from her recent Rosemary Clooney tribute album, but the evening's most winsome chestnut is Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer's "Skylark." In between songs and production numbers, Midler takes swipes at the Bush administration and delivers comic zingers penned by Bruce Vilanch and Erik Kornfeld. She even works in a bundle of local references to the Sharks, the traffic on 101 and the economic woes of Silicon Valley. Videotaped segments provide some nice variety. One has Midler on "Judge Judy" whining about her canceled CBS sitcom. Another has her singing a duet with a video clip of Mr. Rogers. Way to go, Dolores! The centerpiece of Act 2 is the best-yet outing for lounge singer mermaid Dolores del Lago. Still in her electric wheel chair and still adept at twirling balls on a string, Dolores has set her sights on Broadway. This gives Midler and her Harlettes -- also outfitted in fins and in wheelchairs -- a chance to have their way with show tunes from the likes of "Chicago," "West Side Story, "Hello, Dolly!" and, most memorably, "Dreamgirls." Watching Midler as Dolores roll around the floor and hop around on her big fin, you have to say this about that mermaid: She works her tail off. A constant refrain in the evening is, "I'm not retiring, and you can't make me." Why should Midler even think of retiring when she's clearly at the top of her game? During "The Rose," Midler's most beloved tune, the singer asked the near-capacity audience to sing along. Listening to the soft yet solid sound of thousands of people singing her song, Midler was moved to tears. Maybe it was all show biz, but it worked. After all, nobody does show biz better -- or brassier -- than Bette Midler, the Divine Miss M and then some. |
KMB
Review: The Redoubtable Miss Jane