Favorite musical performance you actually witnessed, and can support with video.

[JohnBoy2]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 9:31pm

It doesn't have to be your video, but what are you favorite musical performances, witnessed by you, where you can find some video presentation of it?

Here's one of mine. With or without the video, it's among my top 5 favorite performances I ever saw. Too bad the quality of this clip is so bad.


The Writing on the Wall

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 9:47pm

OMG, JB2---when I read your thread title, this is exactly the clip I thought of.

I will never forget Buckley singing this number. When she got to that last refrain and hit the (freaky) high note, my jaw dropped. I've never heard anybody do that with such power, before or since. There's belting ... and then there's THIS note. I think it came from Mars, truthfully.

She was delightful in the role, too. Eccentric and irreverent. Nothing like Betty Buckley in her prime.

I saw the OBC when it was in previews. They were all fantastic.

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 10:15pm

These topics are getting awfully complicated! Way too many factors for a "little brain" like me to absorb. (I'd love a musical adaptation of "Defending Your Life.")

[Jane2]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 10:32pm

Oh this is easy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD8TS21APxI

[madbrian]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 11:04pm

I was lucky enough to be at City Center for My Favorite Broadway: The Love Songs, so I was there when Julie Andrews and Michael Crawford did a medley from My Fair Lady.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXnNdu1qij8

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 11:05pm

Very difficult choice for me. I have so many favorite moments in theatre.

Here are two from the same show and performer that made me cry every time I witnessed them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Oa0nNRodsw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7adj28-BcFY

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 11:22pm

BTW, did anyone else notice how Chris Fitzgerald looks like Edie in the BWW ad for Young Frankenstein? I mean, he's dressed just like her in the beginning of Act II of Grey Gardens.

[TheatreFan4]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 11:42pm

Sweeney Todd 2008-09 tour.

http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=US#/watch?v=o5IsMa6VCi8&client=mv-google

[JohnBoy2]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 11:52pm

That's the spirit, everyone!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/7/10 at 12:03am

April 18, 1972. Bette Midler, at the beginning of her career.

My lesbian cousin Arlene first took me to see Bette because Arlene's gay male friends had been going to see her at the Continental Baths and Downstairs at the Upstairs. They said she was a combination of Janis Joplin, Barbra Streisand and all 3 of the Andrews Sisters on acid.

It was 1972, and I was only 16, still too young to sneak into the baths with my lesbian cousin, so Arlene picked me up and took me to see the Divine Miss M at the NYU uptown campus in the Bronx. It was the night after Bette appeared on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show for the 2nd time. She was destined for stardom, but still playing small clubs and college dates.

The next month, we went back to see Bette again, this time at the Bitter End on Bleecker Street. We told her we had just seen her at NYU, and she laughed and said what an awful concert that had been. She asked if we were coming the following month to see her and Barry (Barry Manilow, still just her musical director) at their 1-night-only concert at Carnegie Hall. They were producing it themselves, with their own money, and they didn't know if anyone would show up.

We got tickets and went. And a LOT of people showed up. It was June 23, 1972, just three years after Stonewall. Carnegie Hall was sold out: 2800 gay men...and my cousin Arlene. It was one of the most orgasmic concert appearances we will ever see, as close to seeing Judy at Carnegie Hall as anything could get.

The next month, we went back to see her again at her next gig--which this time was at the Bergen Mall in Paramus, New Jersey. This time she remembered us. Referrring to her descent from Carnegie Hall to the Bergen Mall, she said, "Ohhhhhhhhh...how the mighty have fallen! From the baths...to Carnegie Hall...to a mall!"

The next month, August, we went again, and saw her concert in Central Park. She started the concert by reading a telegram she received from "Mister Joseph Papp" telling her that Shakespeare was being performed in the park that night, so could she kindly keep the noise to a minimum. She responded by saying, "Well, listen to THIS, Mister Joseph Papp!" and launched into a loud, raucus low-rent rock-and-roll rendition of "I Feel Like Breakin' Up Somebody's Home."

On New Year's Eve, Arlene and I went to our last Bette Midler concert together. It was her New Year's Eve Gala at Avery Fisher Hall (still called Philharmonic Hall then). Her first album was out, I was graduating from high school in June and going to college, and we knew we had lost our Bette to the rest of the world.

Here are two video clips of Bette, one year later, on a telethon in 1973. By that time, she had already become nationally known.

But Arlene and I, we knew her when...


"Hello, In There"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldqc0_vzfgk


"Friends"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtaU3USDYC0

Updated On: 1/7/10 at 12:03 AM

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 1/7/10 at 12:09am

PJ, one of my favorite posts in my five years on BWW! Excellent narrative!

[Pgenre]

Posted: 1/7/10 at 12:23am

This thread REALLY makes me wish someone recorded the performance of THREEPENNY I attended at which the soundboard blew so the entire show was performed unamplified. Hearing Cyndi Lauper in Studio 54 from the first row with no amplification is something I will never forget, particularly given the fact her "Soloman Song" may have been the best ever performed. Ah, well...

Also, it makes me wish the Avery Fisher Hall Sondheim Celebration Concert was recorded in some form, as Alice Ripley's "Getting Married Today" and Raul Esparza's "Franklin Shepard Inc" will never be topped. Incredible. Oh, wait, it was, but I don't link to such things so, once again: ah, well...

P

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 1/7/10 at 12:39am

Seeing Raul do "Franklin Shephard Inc" at the Kennedy Center WAS truly a revelation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3RAF6jqOYc

[broadwayboy101]

Posted: 1/7/10 at 12:54am

PalJoey, you just made me about 30 times more excited to see Bette next week in Vegas.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/7/10 at 1:03am

Oh PalJoey. All I can say is
you made my jeans explode