I Love The 80's!

Well, last night was certainly worth the 15 year wait. I've been dying to see Janet Jackson since her janet. CD in 1993, but have never been able to until last night. Despite putting out 3 crappy CD's in a row, she's still got it. At least the new one isn't all bad, Feedback is actually incredibly catchy, and 2nite and So Much Betta are also up there with her classics. Unfortunately, the boring title track inspired the worst section of the show, an S&M fantasty played out with audience members, that I really could have done with out. It brought the show to a screeching halt for about 10-15 minutes, and given that she had already done most of her hits, it sent a lot of people around me for the doors. However, once she finally got it out of her system, she came back for the finale and encore with a vengeance, rocking Black Cat and If, two of my favorites that I wasn't sure she'd do, with tons of pyrotechnics, which was everything I imagined her janet tour to be while sitting in my room on the night of that concert listening the the CD because my parents wouldn't let me go. Not only did she do them, she did about everything else, it was a 2 1/2 hour show, not bad considering she's supporting a failed CD and could easily have done a 90 minute montage of hits a la Whitney Houston's 1994 tour or Cher's Believe and Farewell tours. She did work in a couple of medleys which annoyed me, I'd really rather hear the entire song and either have the show be longer, or just have her pick a handful of her most meaningful songs and do them in their entirety, but I'm only really annoyed because it was Escapade and Love Will Never Do that she mixed together, and those are both my favorites and I really wanted her to do them in their entirety. However, she rocked a complete performance of Nasty as well as Together Again, which was the highlight of the night. Visually, the show was absolutely a celebration of her rise to fame in the 80's. Given that the opening act was LL Cool J (which was really sad, but he still looks pretty damn good), it would have been very easy to think we had stepped into a time warp and gone back 20 years, she had a huge faux-hawk and started in a a white sequened skin tight body stocking, and changed into an 80's style prom dress/evening gown, track suit, and a jungle-inspired ensemble. It was all a bit of a disconnect from the rocking music, but a reminder of the time we all loved her music, which really made the concert a make up for those of us too young to have been able to see her then. All in all, a great evening. Next up is Boys from Syracuse this weekend, Manon at the Lyric and then Jersey Boys next weekend, then Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at Northlight, Duffy, Madonna, finally a break, and then Sarah Brightman, all over about the next 6 weeks.

It's not all good news though, right after I posted on Tuesday about Xanadu's imminent closing, I went to playbill.com and the lead story was an update that the producers decided to close it even earlier, and pull the plug after this Sunday's performance. However, the article then went on to explain that it has nothing to do with the quality of the show or the lack of an audience, the economic climate has sapped the producer's investments, and they don't have enough cash on hand to cover costs during the traditionally slow October, so they decided to lock in their profit and close the show, which is also what appears to be happening with [title of show]. So, it sucks that they're going, but at least they're going out winners. However, I forgot to mention a piece of good news, and that is that Shrek very abruptly left Seattle after only running not even 2 weeks. The press release made it sound like it was planned to get it ready for it's Broadway opening in early November, which is coming up, but reading between the lines, the abruptness of the announcement, and the fact that it played almost 5 times more preview performances than regular performances all indicate that it's a show in trouble. Why even bother with the Broadway opening? Just close the damn thing now, learn a lesson, and be done with it. In other good news, Legally Blonde announced yesterday that it is also smelling the burnt toast and will be closing in a few weeks. It kind of sucks for the girl that just got cast via that MTV reality show, but that's what she gets for joining a crappy musical. Next generation of Wicked my ass, good riddance!

Lastly, we all know that the long overdue release of the recording of Patti's 1980 cabaret show is almost here, but did you know that the recording of her late 1980's London show The Cradle Will Rock (her follow up show from Les Miz, prior to the Sunset Blvd. debacle) is also available? I did a search for her name on emusic to see if they had the cabaret show pre-listed, which they did not, but Cradle came up instead, so I'm putting Guys & Dolls on the backburner and will be getting Cradle in a couple of weeks when my downloads refresh, and then I'll get more of Guys with the leftovers and then finish Guys with my November downloads.

So, that I think brings us up to date. I've got one more week before school starts again, so I should get something about Boys up early next week.