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Rating:
A concert eagerly awaited for a lifetime (24 years...) followed by the confirmation that perseverance pays off in terms of satisfaction. Many Italians who, like me, found themselves at the Paris concert, exhausted by the impossibility of seeing Cyndi again in the Belpaese, thought so.
After disappearing from our scene following the golden years of the '80s and a few sporadic TV promotions in the '90s, abroad she managed to stay in the spotlight. With the release of her last CD "Bring ya to the brink" (2008), she finally returned to live performances in Europe. Given the not-so-tender age of both myself and the artist, I set out to review the event in the most objective way possible. After the mediocre performance of the supporting female group, the Anglo-German Robots In Disguise, full of verve but incapable of playing and alien to the art of singing, the theater, sold out, exploded: the large Italian group much more engaged than the bland French audience drowned out the sound of the amplifiers in the first songs.
After the entrance of a top-notch band, out came a delightful and charming petite woman, in leather pants, a baroque shirt, and a black bowler hat. In a playful manner, she threw a wooden plaque on the ground, striking it with a hammer: it was the start of "Change of heart" and everyone present felt a change of heart attack. I stood in front of the stage in full emotional shock: I didn't know whether to scream, sing, jump, in fact, I did all these things together, wondering how someone could be so excellent in dominating the stage and singing in an almost perfect way.
It had always been my obsession: despite watching and listening to concerts on CDs or DVDs over the decades, I wanted to hear with my own ears if the legend matched the reality. With the sequence of the various songs, I witnessed a practical demonstration of above-average vocal prowess: 56 years under her belt and a voice still powerful, malleable, capable of spanning across very different genres: pop, rock, blues, electronic dance, etc. Remarkable physical energy: 90 almost uninterrupted minutes with a Cyndi whose expressiveness and unique and engaging physical presence were an artist complete without frills, with no special effects, dancers, or particular choreography or set design. Straight to the heart, ears, and stomach. Worthy of her greatness as an artist also her greatness as a human being: she tried to shake hands with those she could reach from the stage, asked us to hold on because the venue apparently had no ventilation system, and it was unbearably hot, joked, and chatted as she usually does. She wanted to recreate the joyful party atmosphere by inviting the supporting group for an encore, transforming "Girls just want to have fun". She managed to silence the entire theater by singing "Rain on me" a cappella as an intro to a heart-wrenching version of "True colors" accompanied by her inseparable dulcimer. She sat with the instrument on her knees, closed her eyes, and the audience went silent because we all had lumps in our throats and cried in respectful silence. The song has become Cyndi's anthem; for a decade, she has been involved in humanitarian activities and associations defending gay rights because in the USA, which calls itself the land of freedom, there are still states that discriminate and condemn people based on sexual orientation.
Among her classics, she revived "All through the night", "She Bop", "When you were mine" by Prince, and "Sisters of Avalon" playing the acoustic guitar, "I drove all night", "Money changes everything"; the piano-accompanied cover of "La vie en rose" as an intro to the gem "Time after time" played with the dulcimer, a timeless song, a magic that continues. The new electronic dance tracks of excellent quality were "Grab a hold", "Set your heart", the hypnotic "Echo", "Into the nightlife", and the delirious "Rocking chair" (written with Basement Jaxx).
Though she assimilated the example of the great singers of the past (Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, to name a few), she remains an original and unique artist with an unmistakable voice. An artist doesn't necessarily have to be at the top of the charts always and anyway, personally, I consider a singer valuable if they have the voice and can communicate sensations as well as messages. The involvement was constant from beginning to end, in the more lively songs, we all danced and sang together, while there was respectful silence in the ballads. Tastes are not to be disputed, but better "old hen that makes good broth" than the myriad of more or less pathetic teenage bimbos on record, let alone live!
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