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Paris Las Vegas - March 26, 2011(View photo gallery here)
BB-36  Well, I tried to sing along with Barry during Can't Smile Without You - but he got silly and made me start laughing again. He was speaking the lyrics for each line, so that the audience would know what to sing - I think the audience already knew, but... Anyway, then he got silly and started speaking the lyrics extremely fast. Had to laugh - can't sing and laugh at the same time. He said "If you only knew what I'm going through" so fast, it even made his band laugh. Weekend in New England had extra feeling, as well. It was kind of in the middle between his soft performances and his power ballad performances. You could see that he was into it - he was living the song. When the time came where someone usually yells out - I think about two thirds of the audience did. Now, that was funny! Of course, Barry gave us the "I've still got it line" - but then he kept grinning for a few seconds - took him a little longer than usual to get back into the song. Barry blew us away with his Brooklyn Blues long note again - same as Friday night's show - I think he had an even bigger grin on his face tonight when he finished. I've known people who actually timed Barry when he's held long notes - I'm afraid I don't do that. But to give you some idea of how long he held that note... I had time to pick up my camera, frame the shot I wanted, take the shot, put the camera down, and then sit back and just marvel at how long he was holding the note. That's how long it was! Pretty awesome. The rest of the performance was great, too. It had a really great groove tonight, and Barry was really into it.  I still love New York City Rhythm. There was a funny moment toward the end of NYCR. When Barry and the other 3 guys are all lined up at the piano playing it together, Barry acted like he had been pushed off the piano and he was playing air piano instead! Also, and I can't remember if this was from tonight or last night - after the dance portion and Barry's joke about Dancing With the Stars, he headed back to the piano to play his solo and he said, "Going back to the piano where I'm comfortable." The Grandpa Joe segment was also performed with a little more feeling, a little more emphasis. Barry seemed more drawn into all 3 songs in that segment. During I Am Your Child and Nature Boy, he seemed to be really thinking about what he was singing - more reflective. This One's For You was the same way, to a lesser extent. He didn't stomp his foot tonight at the end of TOFY - so instead of coming across as frustration, it came across as a plea for someone to see that he was singing for them. Isn't it cool how he does that? It's never the same show. Barry may not always change the way he performs every song in every show, but there's never a time when he performs two shows back to back that don't have differences in the tone of the songs.  Tonight was one of the "can't see the forest for the trees" nights - I seemed to be so tuned in to detail that I was missing the big picture. Ever noticed when Chris is playing his trumpet during I Write the Songs? This is the first time it got my attention - but the sound was so clear and brilliant tonight - it made me look over at him while he playing. (Oh yeah, Chris is back - I mentioned someone else playing last time I was here) Or have you noticed when David is playing the conga drums (I think those are congas)? That also stood out - I heard the sound so clearly, I had to move my attention over to him. There was also a time when he was playing another instrument - I'm guessing it was a marimba? Again, I could hear it very clearly. But the sound was similar to what I was describing in my last review about the change in the way Barry's keyboard (not piano, I was tired when I wrote that last review!) sounds on I Am Your Child. And so I did a Google search (see, told ya - can't see the forest for the trees) and found this statement: "The marimba is a non-transposing instrument with no octave displacement, unlike the xylophone which sounds one octave higher than written and the glockenspiel which sounds two octaves higher than written." When I found that I had to search for sound bites to see if I could identify what I'm hearing during I Am Your child (I'm a hopeless geek, I know). Never did find anything that sounds exactly the same. Doesn't matter - just sounds fantastic! Extra feeling again in both Our Love Is Here to Stay and Theme from Love Story. And I think it was especially true for Theme from Love Story - this was a different performance than I've ever seen before. It was still BIG - the entire song was BIG - but there was a soft, feeling quality to the majority of the song that I've never seen before. And there were absolutely tears in Barry's eyes (or his allergies were acting up, whatever). The ending was HUGE. So one blue jacket was missing in action, but the other one is still with us - the blue velvet jacket was still in the show. I realized that you can see it best during Even Now - that's when the color really comes through.  As with most of the songs tonight, Barry put more feeling into Even Now. It can be hard writing these reviews because sometimes meanings are lost when you can't hear the vocal inflection associated with the statement - I can hear my meaning in my mind, but that doesn't do the reader much good! So, when I say that Barry put more feeling into something, there are times I've had people think I was saying that he hadn't done a song well previously - and it's not that at all. I guess what I'm saying is that the performance has changed in such a way that Barry has managed to make the song actually take on a life of it's own. It's more than a performance - it's one of those instances where you can actually live in the song with him as he's performing it if you choose to allow yourself. Barry is a master at that - as great as some other performers are, I've never seen anyone else who can consistently do that - and I've certainly never seen anyone else who can do it to the degree that Barry can. At any rate, Even Now was one of those performances (as were all of the others that I've mentioned in this review) - the song was "real" - Barry performed it in such a way that it appeared to be totally real to him. And so, it was easy for it to be totally real to us. It was a soft, somewhat melancholy performance. His facial expressions, the pain in his eyes - it all looked totally genuine. Even at the end of the song when he was singing that last chorus with the "I swear I think of you, and God I wish you knew" - it looked totally genuine. It wasn't even as much of a power ballad as it usually is at that point in the song - it was softer, more angsty. The long note was perfection. This time rather than take a long shot photo to capture the spotlights shining down, I decided to take more of a close up during that long note - I'm glad I did because you can see some of what I'm talking about in Barry's face as he's reaching out toward the audience.  Bandstand was great fun, again. And Barry is still cutting up and making us laugh. As with the previous night, when I tried to take photos, he would stop being silly - to the extreme! Okay, Barry - I'm not going to try to take any more photos of you being silly. (I am SO not telling the truth!) I think Barry was more animated than he usually is during that segment. I don't recall him going so far to either side of the stage during this song before. He was all over the place. I noticed something interesting about Barry's new white jacket. With the new lighting for Mandy, the jacket appears to be a brilliant white. Just gorgeous. But then during Copa, it takes on an ivory color. More interesting lighting effects. And something else I noticed about the change in lighting and stage layout for Mandy - and it's definitely a change (I checked old photos) - the lighting no longer casts a strange glow on Barry. It does at the very beginning, as the piano moves forward. Barry has an amber glow. But as you can see by this shot, that goes away - and I can now actually take photos of him during this song! I didn't notice that at all on the Friday night show, and almost didn't notice it at this show - but I finally saw it toward the end and caught this shot of one of my favorite moments from when Barry performs this medley. The violet glow is still there for I Write the Songs, but it doesn't seem to be quite as pronounced on him as it used to be.  Again, I didn't take nearly as many photos as I used to. For one thing, this camera doesn't have the burst mode (it says it does, but it hasn't worked on Canon's last two models of this camara). So I can only get one shot at a time. But I'm also being more choosy - I'm trying to select shots of moments that I'm really wanting to capture. But for this next show I'm going to make another adjustment to the camera settings (based on what I've seen the previous two shows) and try to get a few more shots. I'm really trying to catch some full body shots of Barry's classic poses with the gorgeous lighting on him and in the background. This show went entirely too fast - it seemed to fly by. Must be one of the laws of physics they forgot to mention in our science books - maybe no one except Manilow fans have discovered it yet. You know how supposedly time seems to stand still the closer you get to a black hole (the black hole being when the shows are over!) - well that's not true in this case. It just keeps getting faster! Wait, you know what that means? It means that Barry defies all laws of physics! Yep, I think he does...
All photos and content Copyright ©Dana Holland 
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