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At last – a concert in front of a 100% Donna crowd! No blasé charity people, no high rollers waiting to get back to the tables…. Just a pavilion full of fans! I got to see a bunch of you there, and I would start naming names….. but I know I’ll forget somebody so I’ll just settle for saying hi everybody! A special hi to Winnie the Pooh and her brother. Usually I meet strange people in Atlantic City……
this time it was Boston. ;-)
(Although I have to admit, the Pooh costume had to be warmer than what I was wearing.)
I had a great seat to this show – so great that I might just have to frame the ticket!
LOL I’ll never get that good a seat again (unless Donna starts playing casinos that accept bribes again…) I really wanted to bring my digital camera, but I thought that the pavilion would probably confiscate it – as it turned out, despite the heightened terror alert, they didn’t check anything.
I could have carried in a whole television camera crew and they wouldn’t have noticed. (Although how I would have fit them in my little bag is a mystery…..
but I digress. I’m good at that. ;-)
) I did bring a cheap disposable camera, and I took a couple of shots that are hopefully halfway presentable. (I took a couple shots of the 4 Divos of the night – I spoke to two of you that night, but if the other two would like a copy of the pictures, just email me and I’ll send you the file. But until I see the pictures tomorrow, I honestly don’t know if you will even be recognizable in them.)
The show was pretty much the same lineup as Atlantic City – She Works Hard For The Money, Once Upon A Time, I Love You, Could It Be Magic, MacArthur Park, Smile,
Dim All The Lights, On The Radio, Natural Woman, Bruce’s solo of Lé Imaginé Café, My Man Medley, Enough Is Enough, Nights In White Satin, Cold Love, Bad Girls, Hot Stuff and Last Dance.
(Can I just say that I am very happy that This Time I Know It’s For Real is not in the show this year?
It’s not that I have anything against the song itself, it’s just that I HATE typing that title and I think if I had to keep typing it all summer long, I might go completely insane.
LOL)
Now you notice I said “pretty much the same lineup” – there was one very notable difference.
In light of the tragic bombings in London that morning, Donna opted to add one unrehearsed song to the show right after Could It Be Magic. She sang Amazing Grace, accompanied only by Bruce (oops, no, make that Nathan) on piano and she dedicated it to London. (If I had a way to beam it out to you, I would have!)
I’ve heard Donna sing that song a number of times, and I swear she never does it the same way twice.
Last night it was more heartfelt than I have ever heard it before, and when the song was over she asked us all to remember the people of London in our prayers. It was just wonderful and I was so glad I was there to hear it. (I can hear London now, “Prayers are nice, but you know a European tour would make us feel so much better!”
Forget it guys – we Americans aren’t done with her yet!
LOL)
Now what can I say about the show that hasn’t been said already? Well for starters, this was BOSTON! “Enthusiastic” doesn’t even begin to describe the audience.
Where I was sitting, it was sometimes hard to hear Donna over the cheers and singing of the audience.
Oops, did I say sitting? There was very little sitting at that show.
The venue might as well have not even bothered with chairs. : -)
You gotta love a crowd like that!
It meant I could stand anytime I wanted without having to worry about some (casino) person behind me tugging on my shirt and saying “please sit down, I can’t see.” Anytime I stood up – the rest of the place was standing too.
And everyone was so noisy that at one point Donna tried to shush us a little so she could sing. Talk about a losing battle!
There was no way anybody was gonna stay quiet for long!
LOL
One thing that surprised me was the number of out of town visitors I ran into. I figured that Veronica and I (coming from New Jersey and Long Island) would have been the ones who came from furthest away, but boy was I wrong!
There were people there from Los Angeles, Mexico, the UK, and Holland – and those are just the ones I know about.
(And I thought I had a long commute.
LOL)
This time I checked out the merchandise table and I have to say that I like the new shirts.
I bought one there and I have my eye on another that I might grab at Jones Beach. :- ) But I do have one little quibble. There really needs to be a sweatshirt available too – for the idiots (okay, I mean me) who are too dumb to dress appropriately for the weather (despite having grown up near the ocean!) It doesn’t even need to have a picture on it – it can just say “Too dumb to remember that it gets cold by the water 2005”. LOL
I just about froze my twins off until the pavilion filled up and collection of people blocked the cold wind.
Oh wait – I have one other little quibble with the merchandise table – actually with the people running it.
As I stood there pondering which t-shirt was destined to come home with me, I heard a person asking one of the staffers about one of the CDs that was being offered. The person asked what CD it was, and the staffer said “I don’t know, I think it’s Donna’s husband’s” Twenty years of retail experience says that you will sell more copies if you show a tiny bit more enthusiasm for the product. A better answer would have been, “That’s Rainy Day Soul by Bruce Sudano. He’ll be singing tonight too.” And you don’t even have to remember all that – most of it is written RIGHT THERE on the CD. (That was my bitchy rant for the day. LOL)
Now I’m off to get some sleep before my last stalking venture of the summer. Tomorrow is Jones Beach and I hope my fellow Long Islanders are ready to be rowdy. We need to make Boston and Wolf Trap look like they were sleeping through their shows!
;-)
- Cathy, from the Long Island Home for Insane Webmasters ;-)
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