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Written by K. Patrick Welch
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Tuesday, 30 January 2007 |
January 8, 2007
Rose Garden Arena, Portland, OR
First off, let me set the scene: It’s the night of the BCS Bowl game pitting Ohio State against Florida for College football supremacy. I have an invite to watch the game with all my friends. I decline and thinking I can simply get off with a simple, “Can’t make it,” I’m pressed as to why I can’t make it. “I’m going to see Barry Manilow.” Stand up comics haven’t received the kind of laughter that ensued.
You can’t go to a concert with that on your shoulders. You just can’t, especially to see a performer who can make Air Supply look like Zeppelin. So I sat waiting until the lights dimmed, a splash video ran on the big screens giving way to music and finally, walking through a cloud of smoke, Barry Manilow appeared onstage wearing a purple velour coat and sporting a hairdo that was somewhere between Rod Stewart and kettle corn—definitely crunchy. So began an evening of “Music and Passion” with Barry Manilow, who brought Vegas to Portland.
My first inclination is to detest what appears more a really good show on a cruise ship than a concert. But you have to take into account that concerts are not and have never been what Barry Manilow is about. He’s about an evening of entertaining. And entertaining he does. Whether it’s a joke here, a quip there, a clip of his grandfather urging him to sing as a child, numerous jacket changes or his hands splayed in the air at the end of a song (jazz hands) Barry Manilow is entertaining the crowd – one of the reasons he’s scheduled for over 100 shows at the Las Vegas Hilton in 2007. Floating effortlessly from his own compositions to covering classics from the 40s, 50s and 60s, Manilow spent the first hour of the evening showing off his reverence to the songs which made him who he is. Still, he’s never better than when he is behind the piano belting out his own songs. “Weekend in New England” and “I Made It Through the Rain” were stand outs and pointed to the fact that if Manilow ever decided to tour without the Las Vegas schlock and focus on giving his own material the reverence he gives the covers it would be nothing less than a hit parade and at some point you’d think the schlock would begin to scrape off of him. But he won’t and it won’t.
Back onstage after a 25-minute intermission, Manilow continued his oft overly dramatic performance with Norman Rockwellesque stories of childhood and over-rehearsed shtick. Somewhere during all of this he pulled out hit after hit—“Mandy,” “Looks Like We Made It,” “I Write the Songs” and “Copacobana”—all of which, while not being obscenely powerful in flood-inducing memories, stood as strong pieces of noteworthy music from which Manilow has been able to draw on for years in order to prolong a very successful career.
For as many issues as I had with the Las Vegas-style show I saw, none passes muster given that Barry Manilow succeeds in that which he intended; to be a theatrical entertainer. Further still, given my options for the evening and the outcome of the BCS title game, I chose the right option.
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