Cyndi Lauper's True Colors Tour / July 2nd, 2008 / Deer Lake Park / Burnaby (Near Vancouver), Canada
We may not have the glam of Hollywood, and we may not be the upper crust of New England, who can trace their ancestry to the Mayflower, but in the Pacific Northwest, we sure do know how to throw a party! On July 2nd, at Deer Lake Park, in Burnaby (adjacent to Vancouver) Canada, music fans gathered in the late afternoon and stayed until dusk for a celebration of music, performed by some of the last three decades’ most prolific artists.
Nona Hendryx, was the first act to hit the stage, followed by England’s blues guitarist Joan Armatrading, who laid down some sweet licks, before the most influential Canadian singer/songwriter in the past twenty years, Sarah McLachlan, took to the stage. The party kicked into high gear with perennial party band the B-52’s and then the continental journey, billed as the True Colors tour gave way to Cyndi Lauper, who millions of people around the world, have fallen in love with, during her thirty year career.
In this space, it is impossible to give all of these fabulous artists the attention that they deserve, so with our apologies to Hendryx and Armatrading, we are going to focus on providing our readers, with glimpses of the performances delivered by McLachlan, the B-52’s and Cyndi Lauper.
The excitement hung in the air and the crowd was both stoked and demonstratively reverent as they eagerly awaited Sarah McLachlan’s arrival on the stage. Standing alone, with her acoustic guitar McLachlan, strummed the opening bars to her 1997 breakthrough song, “Building A Mystery,” which forever immortalized her name on the American music charts, and gave her a permanent place in our hearts.
McLachlan has been a true innovator in both North American and international music, and it was her Lilith Fair tours during the 1990’s, three in all, which helped launch the careers of numerous female artists. McLachlan’s powerful phrasing, vivid images painted on a musical canvass, and her beautiful vocals, have ensured that tunes such as, “Adia,” will not be forgotten by time. Now seated at the piano, McLachlan began to sing “Adia,” and her fans sang along with her. The song which chronicles the complexities of love rose to # 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1998.
At the midpoint in her concert Sarah McLachlan stopped, just a few bars into another song and said, “This is just a love in. I needed this. Thank you.”
McLachlan’s set closed with two songs, both of which found their place in movies, films that could not be more far removed from one another, in terms of their subject matter and moods. “Angel,” a song that fans often will refer to as In The Arms Of An Angel, paints a stark picture of the more painful moments which life can serve up, and finishes with the promise of peace and comfort. The song appears on the soundtrack for the Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage movie, The City of Angels. She closed her set with “Ice Cream,” a song which found a home in the 1999 Canadian cult film, Better Than Chocolate, which took a close look at the gay lifestyle.
The mood of the evening changed quickly when the ultimate party band, the B-52’s launched into their set. The band played a blast from the past (no pun intended), “Mesopotamia,” a journey back in time, in which vocalist Fred Schneider’s spoken song, was backed by the vocal harmonies of Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson. Wilson played percussion on this tune, while Keith Strickland delivered the guitar riffs.
Despite the fact that Pierson, Wilson, Schneider and Strickland are original members of the B-52’s and have been performing for more than thirty years, it did not stop them from delivering a high energy performance, in which Pierson, dressed in a lime green bustier, black mini skirt, and black stockings cavorted about the stage, while the band performed the quick paced, “Private Idaho,” from their 1980 record, Wild Planet. Pierson was joined in her stage romp, by Wilson, who was also dressed in black, wearing a leather skirt and blouse. The harmonies were fabulous as the B-52’s sang, “Private Idaho.”
