At Last... another Cyndi Lauper concert

Date published: September 6, 2004

I went to my second ever Cyndi Lauper concert tonight (because it's after midnight it was technically yesterday). My friend Emilio called me at about 3 pm and told me that she was going to be performing on the free stage at the New York State Fair in Syracuse, New York. So I hightailed it over there (1.5 hours) and caught another amazing Cyndi concert. The last concert of hers that I attended was a little over a year ago and I wrote about it in a previous journal entry as well.

Like the last concert, it was an absolutely amazing show. Also like the last concert, she ran around through the audience singing and ended up standing literally right next to me (this time it was during Money Changes Everything and she was in the row in front of me, last time it was in the row behind me). Unlike last years show I attended tho, this concert was FREE! I love that word. One would think that because it was a free concert at a state fair, that the crowd would have not been as into it or Cyndi wouldn't have been as into it. From where I sat tho, it was a great show and everyone loved it. Side note, apparently the sound check and earlier show had a few snags, one of which was Cyndi cutting her toe and needing stitches, thus songs were skipped, the show was shorter, and the autograph session (for those who bought a CD or DVD) was delayed until about 7:20 pm.

One thing that was unique about this show, and is usually unique about shows in the central/western New York area, is that there was a sign language interpreter on stage. Rochester is home of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf so there are a lot of deaf people around. Getting to the point, like I said, the interpreter was on stage, far over on the left of the stage. During Hard to Be Me, Cyndi stopped the whole band and said "underwear" to the interpreter, and watched as the interpreter signed it. She got a good laugh and the band started back up. Later on in the same song, The violinist who was now playing the dulcimer, was signing it in the background to the drummer during a break in the song for her.

Another great thing about this concert was that people were allowed to take pictures. At most concerts you're not allowed to, but this was on the free stage and I think there was just no way of policing it. Unfortunately tho, I didn't realize until I was in Syracuse that I forgot my camera! At one point Cyndi laid on her back on the edge of the stage and hung her head over the edge and sung upside down to everyone, I think it was during Hard to Be Me. She had a lot of great photographic moments.

After the Cyndi came back from the encore and sang Time After Time, the rest of the band came out. Steve Gaboury, the pianist, was all dressed up in a blue sarong and woman's bathing suit top with lipstick and sunglasses and a big hat. It was just a little last-show-of-the-tour antics, and I think the next song they were to play was Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. It caught Cyndi off guard tho as she and the drummer were laughing. She asked him if he was Italian. Then she said "Oh wait, french?" as if he said he was french (I didn't hear if he said that or not). Anyway, because of that she said "Do we have time? Let's do it." Then they performed the french sounding version of She Bop before going into Girls, which was the last number.

Oh yeah, I also wanted to mention that there is a new DVD out of Cyndi in concert. If you've never made it to see her in concert, this is at least a glimpse of how great she is. Of course it doesn't compare to seeing her in person, but it's the next best thing. The DVD is called Cyndi Lauper: Live...At Last. If you're interested in getting it, I'd recommend purchasing it through DeepDiscountDVD.com. They're the best DVD store on the web, with prices 99% of the time quite lower than Amazon's prices, AND they have free shipping.

After the amazing show Emilio and I wandered around the fair. I'd never been to the NY State fair. It was good as fairs go. This one booth said "see the world's smallest woman!" We were both intrigued...we paid $1 each and walked up this little ramp. There she was...this small Haitian woman...just sitting there on a couch. She waived. She definitely wasn't as small as they said she was (29" tall and 2" across hands) but she was quite small...but her hands were normal sized. We felt a bit bad for her, just sitting there as people stare at her.

After that we walked around some more, I got a funnel cake. I didn't hear of funnel cake until coming to New York in 1996. At the fairs I always went to (where my dad usually competed in the horse pulls) they just had fried dough. The funnel cake was ok, I think I would have preferred the fried dough tho, as it wouldn't have been as crispy as the funnel cake.

So that was basically my whole day, and I had a blast. Cyndi is always extremely inspirational, so I loved that. It's also cool to go to a fair every once in a while...the fair folk are always intriguing, and fairs always have an interesting grittiness to them.