Friday, February 11, 2011

This week's LVW: Cher's Meek Goodbye

I expected to be slammed hard by the Cher partisans, but instead it's the Celine-lovers who are circulating this week's piece with relish. Still, I can't seem to unseat Peggy and her effing planets on the LVW's Top 10 list of best-read pieces. Hmmph. A pox on Peggy, if that's even her name. Anyhow, here's the piece. Happy weekend! -sf

Why Vegas can’t wait for Celine Dion to return
By STEVE FRIESS


Prediction! Someday soon, Cher will be on a red carpet or on Piers Morgan’s show and someone will ask about her recently ended run at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Cher’s response will be some variation not of nostalgia, pride or gratitude but of snarky relief that it’s over and a disclosure about what a bear that gig was.

How do I know? Well, I don’t, but at Cher’s finale on Saturday I had the sense that she could not be out of there fast enough. There was absolutely no emotion, no sense that this was a special occasion, no affection offered for the city and resort that had just deposited serious coin in her overflowing piggy bank. Heck, she didn’t even say goodbye when it was all over, instead high-fiving some band member and then disappearing out the back door of the Colosseum stage. She seemed so disengaged, in fact, that she didn’t even grab a sailor’s hat from the audience to cavort with in her penultimate number, “If I Could Turn Back Time.” For those unschooled in The Cher, that would be like the pope forgetting communion.

She’s not the first to depart the Colosseum with more shrug than ceremony.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.com

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

In recent interviews, Elton John has talked about how much fun he has performing these days. For one thing, after eye surgery, he can see people in the crowd. For another, he enjoys the freedom he has to do either a solo concert, a concert with his percussionist or a concert with a full band. He said that over the past year, he's played over eighty different songs in concert. If I was to guess, I'd say that having to play the same songs in the same order each night in "The Red Piano" probably bored him. Of course, you'd say that's his choice and you'd be right. If he comes back to Vegas, maybe he should follow the Garth Brooks model a bit more...

Thomas said...

I think Steve might have been referring to Bette Midler rather than Elton. Bette bitched up a storm about how much she hated being in Vegas because it was depressing to see the economic downturn. Perhaps if she had, as she initially said she would, done the kind of community service she envisioned, maybe she might have felt more like the solution instead of adding to the problem.

Dan said...

When I went to see Cher back in October, I really felt like she was going through the motions even then. It was even funnier/sadder that the night I was there (that anti-bullying day, if you recall), she used that night to tell a lovely story about the stagehand she just knew was gay, and as soon as the other stagehands no about it, they never saw him again.