Reviewed By Sebastian Ariel Ruau
There are a lot of artists that are considered Eighties Icons. Several of them still continue with their careers, with more or less success. But in all the cases, people make comparisons between who they were and who they are now. It’s not easy to maintain a career, to seduce a new public and to get people’s attention in concerts for old and new material with the same intensity.

With her new record ‘Bring ya to the Brink’, Cyndi Lauper is back with a fresh sound which works perfectly in concert alongside her classics.

She came ontp the stage in a black suit and blond hair extensions, walked to the middle of the stage, kneeled, and knocked on the floor a few times prompting the band to start with ‘Change of Heart’. Seconds later she got down from the stage and started to sing and dance in the auditorium. The 4,000 people were in shock and as a thousand mobile phones and cameras like up like stars it looked like a night sky.

From that incredible beginning, Lauper mixed the new songs like ‘Echo’, ‘Grab a hold’, ‘Into the nightlife’ (very well received by the crowd) and ‘Set your heart’ with the unforgettable classics ‘I drove all night’ (with Cyndi exercising on a speaker while singing the high notes!), ‘All Through the Night’, ‘She Bop’ (‘A song that gave me a few problems’, she said, because it was almost revolutionary to talk about female masturbation in 1984), ‘True Colors’ (preceded by a impeccable a capella intro to ‘Rain on Me’), ‘Time After time’, ‘Money Changes Everything’, ‘Girls Just To Wanna Have Fun’ and the ‘fan favourites’ (as she called them) ‘Shine’ and ‘Sisters of Avalon’. She also did a song because of pressure from the crowd, ‘The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough’.

The song arrangments ranged from acoustic to rock to dance pop, joined by the strong, high-pitched and steady voice of Lauper, who didn’t stop to dance, jump and replied to screaming fans’ questions (‘Come more often’ said someone, and she answered ‘Well, I wish I could. I got married and I had a child, thats why…’). ‘This is a party, they won’t hurt me and if they do, I’m from Blooklyn. I can take care of myself’, she told to a security guard because he tried to separate people from her.

‘Don’t give up. If you have something in your heart to believe in’ she said before the last song, ‘True Colors’, and told different people to ‘keep fighting for your rights’. In an industry that awards titles to artists like ‘Queen of..’, ‘Princess of’ and ‘Diva’, Cyndi Lauper has a bit of each one, but above all a lot of talent and charisma.

Margaret Cho was the emcee of the event, and she did such a great job that my fear of a lot of down-time between acts was never realized. Cho did stand-up and smoothly tied all the performances together, with nary a moment to be bored. Special surpise guest Rosie O’Donnell also popped in for a stand-up session, and later played percussion on a few Cyndi Lauper songs.

All the bands were super, although I guess I’m getting old because I thought Debbie Harry was just too loud. I’m going to end up being the dork with wearing my Bose Noise-Cancelling headphones at future concerts I attend. Dresden Dolls were the first act to perform, and although I’d really never heard of them before, I thought they were entrancing. Their performance was simple yet theatrical, and my eyes were glued to the stage the entire time.

For some reason, the venue didn’t offer the show on video screens (even though the video screens were present), so I unfortunately wasn’t able to fully appreciate the Dolls’ costumes and facial expressions. I’ve had two of their songs, “Coin-Operated Boy” and “Sex Changes” stuck in my head since the show ended (I think they also played “Shores of California” and “Girl Anachronism”, but I’m a new fan so don’t bet money on that).

Indigo Girls were next, celebrating almost twenty years of touring. They played four songs together (“Closer to Fine”, “Shame on You”, “Pendulum Swinger”, and “Galileo”), and Amy Ray performed one solo piece on a mandolin (I believe… my knowledge of instruments is a bit generalized), “Let it Ring”. They were wonderful, as they always are, and I was glad they were able to appear at the Vegas show. They start a tour of their own next week, which I assume is why they only appeared in Las Vegas.

Debbie Harry performed with a full band, debuting songs from an as-yet-unreleased album. Some of the songs were quite good and catchy, and a couple of them were pretty awful. I thought her performance was stiff and stilted, but my partner says that even in her younger years, Harry was never a very animated singer. She’ll probably improve as the tour continues, as she and the band had a couple of glitches and miscommunications, and continued practice should fix that.

I don’t know anything about Erasure except that I’ve heard many of their songs on the radio, but they were pure, shiny techno. Their staging was like something from Star Trek, all silver and glitter, with three background vocalists who were illuminated in a way which make them look as if Scotty was about to beam them up. Andy Bell sounded great, is a great dancer, and a fun performer. I’m happy I had the chance to see them, and I’d definitely see them again if I had the opportunity.

Cyndi Lauper closed the show, which lasted a little over four hours. If you’ve ever seen Lauper perform before, she was her usual funny and spontaneous self. She sang her classics, like “Money Changes Everything”, “I Drove All Night”, “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough”, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”, and a very cool and dark arrangement of “She-Bop”. She introduced a couple of songs as “being new”, so I assume that means “unreleased”. The show closed with all the performers singing a group version of “True Colors”, as well as a cover of ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me”.

I’m sorry I can’t provide more detailed set lists for Debbie Harry, Erasure, and Cyndi Lauper. They each sang at least ten songs, and I’d gotten to the point of brain overload and couldn’t remember any more information. I can tell you that Erasure did not sing, “Master and Servant”, because that’s a song by Depeche Mode, which shows you how well informed I am about these things. I happen to know every single lyric to every Indigo Girls’ song every recorded, and that’s how I used up all my little grey cells.

There was an afterparty held at Studio 54, and the audience was invited to attend, but my partner and I didn’t because of the high cover charge ($40 each), as well as the fact we’re generally old and sleepy. A video of the “red carpet” outside of the club appeared on the website “Raw Vegas” today, but only Margaret Cho, Andy Bell of “Erasure”, and The Dresden Dolls are interviewed. I don’t know if that means they were the only ones in attendance.

The True Colors Tour runs until the end of June, keeping up a crazy schedule of fifteen cities in 22 days. I’m already plotting about how I could attend the final show in Los Angeles on June 30th.

Review written by: Leigh Ann Gerow

It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from Cyndi Lauper, and it may be some time until we do so again: The charmingly kooky and inventive singer delivers her seventh and final album for Epic Records, the aptly titled “Merry Christmas . . . Have A Nice Life.” The collection of mainly original tunes is a real winner, especially album opener “Home On Christmas Day,” co-written with “Time After Time” collaborator Rob Hyman. Lauper explores atypical holiday themes on such tracks as “Christmas Conga” and her loungy/ska rendition of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree.” There are also two tracks from previous albums, “Feels Like Christmas,” a Cajun-spiced tune from “Hat Full Of Stars,” and “Early Christmas Morning” from “Sisters Of Avalon.”

The album closes with a stark “Silent Night” in honor of the late Peter Wood, a keyboardist who toured and recorded with Lauper.

One thing is clear: When Lauper says Have a Nice Life, she means it—despite the sugary sweet, marzipan coating, this is a heartfelt, sincere project. Next to the tender songs (“Home on Christmas Day” and the lullaby “New Year’s Baby”), there’s substantial evidence that this girl still wants to have fun, especially toward the end of the year.

After all, who else would do the “Christmas Conga” while “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree?” Highlight pick: “Minnie and Santa,” a slightly racy tale of a woman’s everlasting belief in Saint Nick.

Two years later, an all-female Los Angeles quartet, the Bangles, joined the fun crusade with a pair of Top 5 hits, “Manic Monday” (“I wish it was Sunday ’cause that’s my fun day”) and “Walk Like an Egyptian.” For the rest of the decade, the two acts set up residence in the Top 10 with a steady diet of giddiness, adolescent longing and juicy pop melodies.

It’s a thin line between advocating fun and appearing frivolous, however, and by 1990 Lauper and the Bangles were on the wrong side of the border. A 1991 solo album by the Bangles’ most appealing singer, Susanna Hoffs, and a 1993 album by Lauper barely dented the public consciousness. Chastened, both waited years before releasing any new projects. Now the new albums are out. They’re neither triumphs nor disasters but find both women in transition.

Cyndi Lauper: `Sisters of Avalon’
Lauper has made the more radical changeover. Gone are the bubbly, squealing chorus hooks and the novelty-song lyrics that seemed so well suited to her high-pitched voice. In their place are songs written around rhythm patterns rather than melodies. In recent interviews, Lauper has praised house and bass-and-drums records, and she uses similarly stark and muscular beats as the basis for her new songs.

On top of these rhythm tracks she has placed moody, cabaret-tinged, lower-register vocals as if she had been reborn as Marianne Faithfull. It’s an unexpected but oddly appealing new direction, for Lauper reminds us that she’s a special singer, whether she’s belting out anthemic refrains as in the past or smudging impressionistic harmonies as she does here.

By deemphasizing melody, however, Lauper (who opens for Tina Turner at Nissan Pavilion June 21) puts more weight on the words of her songs, and that’s where “Sisters of Avalon” (Epic) runs into problems. Ten of the dozen songs were written by Lauper and one of her producers, Jan Pulsford, who are too willing to talk about “mystery,” “dreams” and “nightmares” without actually evoking them. Yet whenever Lauper tackles a story grounded in the details of reality — as in the disco tale of two working-class dancers, “Ballad of Cleo and Joe,” and in the bouncy narrative about a lesbian romance, “Brimstone and Fire” — her new musical approach works like a charm, for it combines the urgency of the beat and the subtleties of interpretive singing.

Amid the rumbling buses, pounding jackhammers, wailing sirens and screeching brakes came the sound of amplified music echoing from some unseen place.

It was drifting off the roof of the new Virgin Megastore, where a passel of musicians — Cyndi Lauper, Jill Sobule, Rosie Gaines and the Beggars among them — were on hand to hype the store’s opening.

Billed by the company as the biggest record and video store in the country — 53,000 square feet — the three-story entertainment emporium is the latest in Virgin’s 60-store worldwide chain.

The store, which has 125,000 CD and cassette titles, 2,000 CD-ROMs, 15,000 video titles, a small bookstore, a cafe and 500 listening posts, actually opened Saturday.

But yesterday was the “grand” opening, with Lauper, her short-cropped hair the color of a canary and the texture of cotton candy, starring in a ribbon-cutting routine witnessed by a couple of hundred fans and passers-by crowded around the corner.

Lauper, dandy in blue-and-green checked peddle pushers, shiny black cowboy shirt with red fringe, green ’40s-style open-toed heels and blue toenails, wielded a giant pair of fake gold scissors while a Virgin official did the actual snipping. He made a remark that was drowned out by traffic. Lauper said something like, “Music, music, music! Shout, shout shout!” then was hus tled away by a pack of bodyguards and guys with walkie-talkies.

“Yeah, this is my first roof gig,” she said as she disappeared into a side door.

“Beach Blanket Babylon” star Val Diamond was also a roof virgin. “I hope we don’t have to climb up there on scaffolding,” she said with a smile.

Yesterday’s scene was a far cry from the famous Beatles performance on the roof of Apple Records in London in the late ’60s. The south side of Ellis Street between Powell and Stockton was blocked off to traffic to make room for spectators, but it was empty. You couldn’t see the performers on the roof anyway.

People poured through the store and milled around outside, where the roof action was broadcast on TV monitors and speakers. Around 1 p.m., writer Jessica (Decca) Mitford sang the Beatles’ “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” to kazoo accompaniment by the Dectones.

In the intimate confines of the Ford Theatre, Lauper reintroduced herself to her L.A. faithful, who were out in force to hear what the songbird has been up to since she last recorded three years ago.

Lauper’s set consisted of all the songs, in order, from her upcoming Epic Records release, “Hat Full of Stars,” due June 15. With an energetic Lauper in fine voice and a first-rate band, the potent material is personal, yet commercially viable. The girl who just wanted to have fun has matured and ripened.

At 39 years old, the singer, whose obviously found happiness in her personal and professional life, is totally at ease on stage. While audience members shouted endearments and encouragement, Lauper kibbitzed with them as if they were old friends who haven’t seen each other in years. She even stopped in mid-set to sign an autograph to a fan who said she had once promised it to him.

Her sparkling personality only helped the new material, which swings through hip-hop, Celtic marches, pop bounce, folk, funk, pure rock ‘n’ roll and Cajun and African stylings.

While Lauper’s wide-ranging vocal ability could previously be described as annoying, it has taken on new strengths, running the gamot of emotions in her new work. She effortlessly alters singing styles to fit the song’s various moods.

The new Lauper sings about such serious issues as incest (“Lies”), abuse (“Broken Glass”), prejudices (“A Part Hate”) and death (“Sally’s Pigeons”) with just the right amount of sensitivity.

And although the material is so much more vital, it hasn’t lost its commercial appeal.

After her third record, “A Night to Remember,” bombed and her two film projects followed suit (one was actually never released, the other was “Vibes”), Lauper has gotten up the strength to do it again.

Her new film, “Life With Mikey,” has opened to lukewarm boxoffice, but based on the material performed here, the potential for her new disc is limitless.

There were some problems about the translation, it was not so good, but the photographic session was brilliant! She wore a black overall at the beginning, then she took it off. During the conference she had a black dress with white dots and her hair was not black & white, but black & yellow.

Here there are some comments and headlines from some magazines and newspapers (sent and translated by Julio Pena):

Q: What do you know about Venezuelan and Latin music?

CL: Latin music is becoming popular in US. I love the latin rhythms. I love to mix them with pop music; I have met fabulous artist such as Celia Cruz and María Conchita Alonso.

“ULTIMAS NOTICIAS”, Newspaper

Cyndi Lauper disappointed us, we were waiting a tall, exuberant and eccentric woman, as we have seen her in the videos. Some people adviced that she was strict, noisy and even bad mannered. We actually found a small and sweet woman, very simple with sad eyes and a glamorous face. Indubitably she transforms herself on the stage!”

A NOT-SO-FUNNY THING Happened to Cyndi Lauper on the way to completing her new album, A Night to Remember: She made a movie. It was called Vibes, and it was a real clinker. Perhaps most damaging to Lauper’s career as a singer, though, was the single she recorded for the film. After the two hit-packed albums, She’s So Unusual and True Colors, the song she recorded for Vibes, “There’s a Hole in My Heart (That Goes All the Way to China),” proved the first unequivocal flop of Lauper’s solo career.

“The movie had some repercussions,” Lauper says by way of explaining the two-and-a-half-year lapse between True Colors and A Night to Remember. Originally slated for release last fall, the album was pushed back while the singer reworked it, adding several new songs and remixing its original tracks. “The album did change in a lot of ways,” she says. Then, considering her desire to still make films, she adds, “That’s the last time I’ll take a part because of the part, hoping that the script will get better. It never does.”

Lauper was also deeply affected by a trip she made last fall to the Soviet Union as part of a contingent of American songwriters that included Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, her collaborators on the song “True Colors.” Far from home, the singer underwent a reaffirmation as an artist.

“You become in the profession of ‘being famous,’ as opposed to what you started doing in the first place, which is the music, the writing and the creation part of it,” she says. “I had lost touch with that because of all the business obligations. I didn’t feel like an artist anymore. So I went back to my roots. I’m not Russian, but I was thinking of the farthest place on the earth I could go. And I just stopped all the other things that I could’ve done, and I did that and went back to the writing part and the craft and got to mix with other writers.

“Russia is a strange place, because they want so much to create, and they really remember what it’s all about. We forget the writing and how great is is just to do what you love to do. Over there, it’s so hard to do what you love to do. For instance, videos are outlawed. These guys are dying to make videos. And there are a lot of underground bands that are really, really fantastic. The lyrics are prolitic, and they’re not like greeting-card songs, you know, which of course strikes a chord in me.”

Lauper is referrring to “True Colors,” which, after climbing to the top of the charts, was licensed by Kodak for film commercials. (She doesn’t own the song, penned by Kelly and Steinberg) The commercials “got to me.” She says. “But that wasn’t me. When I sang True Colors, it was strictly something about the inside of people. It had nothing to do with ‘Will you buy this product?’ And there’s a strange twist because we are on a business where you buy the product. I do something that I want to be universal and really strike a common chord that’s in all of us, then usually some big company comes along and says, “Hey, we wanna buy that.” So I always have a problem with that.”

The writing credits for A Night to Remember read like a who’s who of hit makers: Kelly and Steinberg co-wrote six of the album’s eleven songs either on their own or with Lauper and Christina Amphlett of the DiVinyls; Desmond Child (who was coauthored hits for Aerosmith and Bon Jovi); Franke Previte (who co-wrote tow of the hits from Dirty Dancing) and Diane Warren (whose latest hits is Elton John and Aretha Franklin’s “Through the Storm”) also contributed tunes. Backing musicians include Eric Clapton, bassists Bootsy Collins and T Bone Wolk, singer Larry Blackmon and zydeco accordionist Rocking Dopsie.

“It’s not enough to be yourself again,” says Lauper. “For me, anyway. If it’s just about growth and development, that’s not hard to do, ’cause you really have to grow and develop. I’m hellbent. I got this vision in my head, and I just have to get it out; I have to create it. So I’ll go out on a limb a little bit and do something a little more dangerous, because the result could be great.”