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From: tommyo@ihuxw.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Barry Manilow Opens American Tour - Review
Message-ID: <374@ihuxw.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Jun-83 12:33:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihuxw.374
Posted: Thu Jun 23 12:33:16 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jun-83 01:12:33 EDT
Lines: 37

Last night, at the Poplar Creek outdoor theatre located just N.W.
of Chicago, Barry Manilow opened his 1983 American tour.
If you`re a Manilow fan, you`ll be happy to know that the
concert was great.  He did most of his hits, very often in a
2 or 3 song medley (Missing were "Somewhere In The Night", "When
I Wanted You", "Weekend in NE", "Lonely Together", "Ships").
He handled the ballads very well, especially "Memory", "This
One`s For You", and "Lay Me Down"(From Manilow II, I think).
The up-tempo songs were good, though I didn`t care a lot for his
opening number "Hot Tonight".  He also banged away on a small
electric organ during "Some Kind of Friend" that I didn`t care
for too much.  His version of "The Lion Sleeps" to open act 2
wasn`t too bad.  He got his biggest response from his ballads.
He also tossed in "American Bandstand", which included a nifty
little dance scene with his 2 female backup singers, and the
title cut from his latest album "Here Comes The Night"
He didn`t do the entire "Copacabana"(yea), but did toss in
some dancing at that point too.

The opening of the second part of the show, after a 20 minute
intermission, had the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs leads a
symphony orchestra, followed by BARRY-TONE NEWS, a black and
white short describing Barry`s world tour, which was pretty
funny.  Barry did some of his usual shtick (the clarinet,
who would write songs that were SO depressing) and also
had a woman come up on stage to sing "I Don`t Walk Without
You" with him.  The lighting was good, sound was fine,
though a couple times the background singers were hard to hear,
and he had a big backdrop that he had different things on
(NY skyline for "NY City Rhythm", stars for a ballad or 2)
Without the intermission, the concert ran about 2 1/4
hours, which is pretty good.  Admission price for the
pavillion seats was kinda high ($18), but for a big
Manilow fan like myself, it was worth it.

Tom O`Connor
ihuxw!tommyo