A Night with THE BEST!
I really do not like concerts. I hate the idea of paying to stand up. I figure I can just sit at home and listen to the polished music at no extra charge. Still, as you can see from my concert posts, I do attend a concert from time to time, especially when they are free.
My father knows a concert promoter, and this promoter gives him discount vouchers to pass out to help fill the stands at concerts. Occasionally, the promoter gets actual tickets to concerts as a reward, and he sometimes passes them on to my father. So, he gave my father ten tickets to Tina Turner at the Palace of Auburn Hills. This was a once in a lifetime chance–to see Tina Turner live, and for free! So, I went. The ten person crowd consisted of my parents, one of their neighbors, six of their friends from various church congregations, and me. I was about half the age of everyone there, but Tina was so amazing that I still was able to feel right at home.
The concert started started shortly after eight with Tina in a black blouse and shiny black knee length leggings. She opened with Steamy Windows, a great rock tune to get us hyped up quickly. This was followed by Typical Male, River Deep, Mountain High, What You Get is What You See, and Better Be Good to Me.
At this point, Tina left the stage for a wardrobe change. We were entertained by a sort of staged, crazed fan dance, complete with lots of flips and running around.
Tina then came back out with a long red dress/cape and sang Acid Queen. Let me say right here that it is amazing how wonderful Tina‘s voice still sounds and how she still moves around in those hills like it is nothing. Some people my age cannot even walk in hills.
After Acid Queen, Tina shed the red cape/dress to reveal an extremely short red dress to fully show off her legs (Beyoncé probably thinks she originated this) and went right into What’s Love Got to Do with It, followed by Private Dancer.
There was another wardrobe change at this point while we watched the “animals” dance. Then Tina came out in her Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome costume to sing “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome).”
The concert took a long break at that point. The lady is 69 years old next week. She needs a chance to breathe between sets. The break lasted from around 8:55pm to 9:30pm.
It was during this break that the mother of one of my childhood friends recognized my mother and came to say “hello.” The first thing out of her mouth to me was “Congratulations! I heard you got married.” I guess that’s going to haunt me forever (I say this like the divorce was not only final just the day before, though LOL). The funny thing is that I am not the one who told all of these people I got married in the first place, and I was not even married in this state. I just looked at my mother, who was already trying to measure my reaction and response, and then simply said “Thank you.”
When the break was over, Tina and singers were sitting for a more stripped down set. Back in a black blouse and black knee length leggings with flecks of glitter, Tina went into I Don’t Wanna Fight. The other songs from this laid back set were Help, Let’s Stay Together, Undercover Agent for the Blues, and I Can’t Stand the Rain.
At this point, Tina stood up and got busy rocking out again, belting out Jumpin Jack Flash and It’s Only Rock and Roll. She left the stage during this and one of her supporting singers (Lisa Fischer of “How Can I Ease the Pain” fame) finished up It’s Only Rock and Roll.
It was time for another wardrobe change. Tina came back out of the Bond “eye” with a long black cape/dress and sang “Goldeneye.” Tina then shed her black cape for a little brown number with flecks of glitter that was just as short as the red one. Tina then broke into “Addicted to Love.”
It was then time to get sad because when Tina started singing “The Best,” we knew that a night of amazing music and dance was coming to an end. After “The Best,” Tina introduced the band and finished out with, of course, “Proud Mary.” Then she left the stage.
But wait, the house lights never came on (yet, uneducated concert goers started leaving anyway), and Tina eventually came back out in her white blouse and black knee length leggings and sang “Nutbush City Limits,” part of which while riding a platform above the floor crowd and sometimes literally hanging over the sides of it! Then she finished with “Be Tender with me Baby.”
By the time it was all done, it was around 10:45. What a night!
While my father has gotten some really good seats from the promoter for some concerts, these seats were on the top level in the second to the last row. I asked ahead of time, though and brought my opera glasses. I did not take a camera with me because I knew that I could not get any decent pictures from where I was sitting, but I am thinking that I should have taken it anyway for the sake of a little video or at least better sounding audio than my cell phone. Here are the very poor cell phone clips anyway. Enjoy!
“The Best” clip
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“Proud Mary” clip
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