Tag Archives: music

Rant and Rave, Stage

Lady Gaga Jazz Las Vegas

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Summation:
  • This is good. This is strong. This is courageous.
  • This is not epic, not a trend, not a blueprint.
  • This is Gaga … with a little help from friends.
Lady Gaga delivered an installment of her “Jazz and Piano” show at Park MGM on the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday, June 9, 2019. For well over two hours, Lady entertained the packed audience and entertained the idea that she could, as she explained from the stage, “carry her own torch” to bring this style of music into the 21st-century limelight. Did she succeed?

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Rant and Rave, Stage

Justin Timberlake Raleigh

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The nail that sticks up gets pounded down, as does the audience for Justin Timberlake’s “Man of the Woods” tour.

The show (not a concert) streaks out of the gate onto a stage backlit with bright lights. The use of lasers was grand — they have been too little used for too long. Immediately the lack of audio clarity and the excess of volume overwhelm any sense of ‘song’ or ‘lyrics;’ this remains true for most of the first of two hours.

This show could better pace the crowd rather than continuing to drive the hammer. There have been concerts at PNC Arena, including Billy Joel, where the audio is clear, the stage is lit, and the crowd is managed by the performer throughout the affair, little of which happened on the sixth of January, 2019.

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Rant and Rave, Stage

Rod Stewart Las Vegas

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I was drawn into the way-back audio annals to hear Rod Stewart.
Good Knight! Sir Rod is still performing! My friend ‘J’ has a fetish for those she terms “aging British rockers.”

At Las Vegas’ Caesars (is it still a Palace?) for a show billed as “The Hits,” I yearned for Maggie May, Reason To Believe, Stay With Me, (I Know) I’m Losing You, Every Picture Tells A Story, Mandolin Wind, and Twisting The Night Away.

While Maggie may be an essential hit, those others were surprisingly not included in this performance. It would also light my particular fire to have had some Handbags and Gladrags in a Gasoline Alley.

Still, the songs had flair, the night was fun, the arena was filled, the audience was fully participatory, and the festivity of Sin City was brought to bear.

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