REPORT BY KTL
fsktl@uaf.edu

Lucy in concert in San Francisco.

It’s 1:10 a.m. and I have to leave for the San Fran airport at 5:00 a. m, so this will be a fast pass over a fun night.

The Herbst Theater is a lovely place-a big old fashioned "house". It immediately put me in mind of The Fifth Avenue Theater in Seattle where Lucy played in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes". A little less fancy and murals rather than a dragon on the curtain, but both in the same league with the same feel.

The curtains were open and the instruments were set up when we arrived in the theater. Tig opened and mostly played with the audience rather than having a set routine. Then the band came onstage, Tig left and Lucy was introduced. She walked in from stage left. And she looked fantastic.

She’s gone back to a light brunette hair color that she wore in long loose curls. I think she’s much more beautiful as a brunette. It suits her skin tone. And bonus-it REALLY makes her beautiful blue eyes stand out.

She was wearing a well fitted, gun-metal grey sheath dress that reflected sparkles of light-not rhinestones though-just different areas of the dress would glow as Lucy moved. She had on over-the-elbow black gloves trimmed with feathers at the arm end. And her feet sported very high leopard skin heels-chunky heels but high ones.

My first thought was that she looked like a gangster’s moll from an old movie. (But perhaps that was just the gunmetal grey that brought that on.) Later on, when she began to slink around the stage for some of the songs, she really looked like a character that Lana Turner or Veronica Lake might have played in a little noir flick.

Of course at one point (and sadly, I don’t remember which song it was on) she started a strip tease, tugging off her gloves finger by finger by finger with her teeth. Even more sadly for some people, that was all she stripped off. Wait-I lie. She also removed her leopard skin chunky heels just before she left the stage-or maybe it was after her first encore.

She sang songs she has sung for us before, but they’re good old ones. Two new things were added-this time fans made some videos and they were projected behind Lucy as she sang. A number of them used clips from XWP. It was fun to see Xena while Lucy was standing in the foreground singing to us. There were a few of these videos.

There used many XWP episode clips but one of them also had some very early stuff that Lucy was in. Ads, clips from the New Zealand satire show "Funny Business", ET clips of early Xena days, clips from her performance in Grease on Broadway, her stint on Saturday Night Live, her various guest appearances on sitcoms and dramas, her roles in theater movies, her television movies, her previous concerts and her work on Battlestar Galactica. Nicely done and it was a real trip down memory lane seeing her very early TV work and interviews again.

Later on a number of people commented that while they enjoyed seeing the videos, it was very distracting. That they’d get engrossed in the video and then suddenly remember that Lucy was onstage singing, so they’d look back to her. We joked that only Xena could take the spotlight off Lucy singing live.

The second new thing was a little home video showing a squirrel that Lucy was taking care of. She was at Michael’s house and found this little squirrel in his yard where I think she or he said that the squirrel had fallen from a tree. So we had the first clip of Lucy taking care of the squirrel, feeding it with an eye dropper. The little thing climbed around on her upper chest and shoulder. It was really cute.

Later on in the show we got the second squirrel clip. This one was a little more shall we say "down on the farm?" Lucy explained as she worked on the squirrel that many animal babies this small need to have their mothers lick their genitals in order to start urinating. (Now how she knows this was not explained.) You could hear Michael in the background giggling and making smart aleck remarks along the lines of hoping she wasn’t about to do that. And she didn’t-instead she used a cue tip-NO NO, WAIT, that’s spelled Q-tip (jeez) and stroked the little lad’s genitals with it as he sprawled on a towel on her lap. More giggling in the background. She had put the Q-tip in her mouth (presumably to lubricate it with spit) and when she put the used one down and reached for another one, Michael yelled out something like, "Be careful! Don’t grab the wrong one to put in your mouth!"

Lucy picked one up and put it in her mouth and the audience in the theater made "Eeeeews!" of disgust. That was the end of the squirrel clips.

Lucy was in lovely voice tonight. And powerful-she filled that hall with sound. Lucy always plays a character on stage, but tonight there wasn’t quite as much of that as usual. In this performance, there was a lot of just real Luce. Which was great-I think she’s finally getting confident enough in her voice to just be herself singing, rather than always being a character singing. She didn’t even wear any fetish clothing to distract us. Although, leopard skin chunky high heels could be someone’s fetish, true.

The acoustics were very fine I thought. Some folks were saying they felt it was her best concert ever. I think in terms of the band being so good and Lucy being so good, this performance is, if not the top one, very near the top for sure.

But then we always say that don’t we? The oddest thing was that it was over and done with in one night. This is the first time I’ve experienced that-I’ve always gone to Lucy concerts that repeat one or two nights more. And I always feel that the last night is the best one. But part of that is that Luce can really let it rip the last night and not worry about ruining her throat for the next performance. And of course that concern wasn’t necessary here either.

Highlights:

Lucy crawling around the stage like a big cat during "Like The Way I Do".

Seeing how she loves to play off people-how she sings to individuals while sharing her songs with the whole crowd.

During "You’re So Vain", she did a little Ms. Amphiplolis hip swing motion as she strutted around the stage, yelling in song lyrics at the person she was dedicating the song to.

But my favorite highlight of the whole show was when she returned for a second encore and announced that she and the band and the back-up singers would re-perform "Bitch"-in any style we wanted them to. There was a little silence, then people started to yell things out and the one they picked to do was a bluegrass version. They played it hysterically fast and the already barefoot Lucy began to pump her elbows and bounce up and down and twang it up as she fast stepped around the stage. It was totally hilarious. Can’t wait for the bootleg clips to come out on that one.

Lucy’s song list:

Tell Momma
Be My Girl
Like the Way I Do
Superstar
Film: Squirrel Epic
Wonderful
Damn I wish I was Your Lover
What’s Up
You’re So Vain
I Fooled Around And Fell In Love
Hallelujah
Total Eclipse Of The Heart
New And Beautiful
Film: Return Of The Squirrel (The epic continues, with props)
River Deep
(Lucy runs away)

Encore:
Wide Awake
Bitch

(Lucy runs away again)

Encore Two:
Bitch (bluegrass version)
Bitch (blues version)

It’s now half past two. Good night and pleasant dreams.

KT