On Friday, we met up with Peter for dinner at Jack Astor’s down on Front St and it was like going to a Kylie concert because they had a bunch of Kylie hits on heavy rotation. That was rather premature because in fact we were going to the Kylie concert at the ACC after that! Kylie was touring as part of her For You, For Me tour which is Kylie’s first ever North American tour (and Friday was her first time performing in Canada). Suprisingly, this tour only visits 6 cities (with Toronto being the only Canadian stop) and has only 9 dates! Seems like a waste to choreograph an intricate show for such a short tour, but I’m not complaining.
Believe it or not, this was my first ever “pop” concert. I’ve seen lots of rock bands and such, where they walk around the stage playing instruments; but this was my very first Michael Jackson-esque entertainer spectacle. I was worried that we would see lots of lip synching and dancing, but surprisingly I was wrong on both accounts.
I think Kylie was singing live because her mic was a little unbalanced (too loud), and you can really hear a lack of vocal volume control when she punches through the high notes. Not that that’s a bad thing, live is great. The music was live too, including a brass band that came out for some songs. That’s such an odd thing to say for a pop concert.
But unlike Britney et al, she didn’t dance at all! She kind of just sashayed around the stage with her microexpressions on display on two very clear TVs to the side of the stage. In fact, it was a lot like a Celine Dion concert except there was a lot of disco and dancing GLBT in the audience.
Since I had seen the wiki page, I knew exactly what the setlist would be. That is good and bad, it ruins the surprise (especially interesting samples such as Madonna’s Vogue) but I knew exactly when to record the songs I liked. Even with that knowledge were still a couple of pleasant surprises. Instead of the dated original mix of Loco-motion she performed a cabaret version of it in Christina Aguilera style.
Then for the encore, she played a faux game of hmm what song should I sing for you guys. Well I could have done a Babe Ruth and called it but she surprised us on the last song. There was a request from the crowd for Your Disco Needs You since it contained some lyrics in French (and you know all Canadians are frenchies) and after some discussion with the band she actually sang it before finishing with Love at First Sight! Well it wasn’t entirely a surprise for the people that requested it because they knew she had it prepared after performing it a few nights ago in Chicago.
The only bad thing was that we were sitting quite far away which was a balance between Ticketmaster’s exorbitant fees and actually going to the show. We were able to watch close-ups using the TVs, but I was wondering whether it would be worth it to pay more to be in the first 10 rows and get a great view. Which kind of makes me want to just be able to buy a DVD of the tour.
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