June 9, 2008

Confessions of a Cher wannabe

Kathy B was one of my closest friends when I was in junior high school. Every day after school one of us would bike to the other’s house and we’d spend the afternoon dialing the phone continuously, trying to win radio contests. We got through often enough and on Saturdays we’d take the city bus to downtown New Orleans to pick up our prizes at the radio stations. All of the popular DJs knew us and our social reputations were greatly enhanced whenever one of them would dedicate a song to us. That started one Saturday when the DJ saw us in the hall outside his glass booth, singing along to the record he was spinning. Was it WNOE or WTIX? I don’t remember, but I remember what he said. “That was Sonny and Cher’s new hit, I Got you, Babe, and I’m dedicating it to Kathy and Skeet, their biggest fans.” Bam! We were more popular than the cheerleaders by Monday morning, and we worked it for all it was worth. We brought homemade cookies and handcrafted pillow dolls to the stations on later visits, assuring that the mentions would continue. Kathy got rid of her feathered do and ironed her long hair straight so she could be Cher when we sang our duets. I was frumpy even then and always played Sonny’s part. Their hits kept coming and we worked diligently at creating a routine for each one. We sometimes performed them for gatherings of friends, basking in the glow of their admiration (though I suspect now they may have been laughing at us instead of wishing they could be us,) but mostly we just sang into hairbrush microphones behind the closed door of one of our rooms. I wanted to be Cher, of course, but there was no way I could pull that off. There was not an ounce of glamor or sophistication in me - there still isn’t - and I didn’t have the skill or the hair to make myself over into a passable Cher lookalike. Has anyone ever done glamor better than Cher? She had it in a fringed vest in the old Sonny and Cher days and has taken it to ever-higher levels throughout her solo career. Her outrageous wardrobes have kept folks talking, but it’s the music of course, that keeps us all coming back for more. Her voice and the vitality she packs into every performance create sell-out crowds wherever she goes.

Recent news out of Vegas stimulated a cascade of memories of Kathy B and my adolescent fantasies of someday being “just like Cher.” The fantasies fell by the wayside long ago, but I’m still a huge Cher fan and still take notice of the goings-on in her life. The announcement that she’s replacing Celine Dion at Ceasars Palace caught my attention and is good news for all Cher fans. No more waiting for her to announce a new tour schedule, because her fans know they’ll be able to go to her instead of waiting for her concerts to come to them. And it’s Vegas! Can you imagine adding the Vegas glitz to the already over-the-top Cher image? If it’s possible for her to be even more dazzling, Vegas will be the place that happens. People are structuring their vacations around Cher tickets at Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas months in advance because they’re selling out that far ahead of time. I won’t be going to Vegas this summer, but Cher’s schedule at Caesars Palace already extends well into the fall, so I might just make it some day. Good thing I have that extra time, too. I’ll want to be in the best possible shape when she calls me up on stage to help out with a duet perfomance of one of her oldies. Not that I’m still living in fantasyland, you understand. I’m too old for that, but it could happen, so it’s not really a fantasy, right? I need to be ready, just in case. Now where’s that hairbrush?

Technorati Tags: adolescent fantasies, Caesars Palace, Cher, entertainment, Vegas