At first blush, there's little common ground between Tina Turner and Cyndi Lauper, who teamed up last night at the Corel Centre before 15,000 fans.
But despite emerging in different show business eras, both women enjoyed their greatest rush of fame as music video was first making an impact as a marketing strategy for record companies.
Their commercial potency has waned in recent years, but you would never guess by the reaction last night, from a crowd that humbled the following for recent visiting titans like Aerosmith, Rush and ZZ Top.
Despite being in the midst of the intercontinental Wildest Dreams tour, Turner's profile lately has leaned more heavily on her moonlighting as a hosiery spokesmodel, a fact underlined by the massive, ugly advertising banner dropped over the stage prior to her entrance. I hope she's getting good dough for selling her audience's attention.
But that audience happily forgave La Tina, who put on the kind of glitzy show rarely seen in arena-rock circles, but quite common in Las Vegas showrooms.
With a seven-piece band, costume changes, hydraulic platforms, a pair of old-Hollywood glamor staircases, a stage-rear projection screen, a hot-footing trio of dancers and some nifty choreography to test the star's Hanes-encased gams, this was Tina turned up to 10.
Turner's energy level was exemplary and the show's staging -- from the lights and sound to the dancing and musicianship -- were top-drawer. Especially impressive was a gigantic golden camera aperture, which lurched open to reveal Turner crooning the theme from the James Bond flick Goldeneye.
River Deep, Mountain High -- her landmark 1966 collaboration with Phil Spector -- was offered up early and eagerly received. Hopefully Celine Dion was somewhere listening and taking notes. And a low-key version of Al Green's Let's Stay Together was a gem. But for every highlight on that calibre, there was misses like her slavish cover of John Waite's one-hit-wonder, Missing You. Ditto the Euro-pop pseudo-sultriness of Wildest Dreams' title cut, although the audience didn't seem to mark the difference.
Turner remains a fine singer and an engaging performer. But her show would only be enhanced by stripping away some of the excess and letting her vocal talent and personal charisma, and not production values, carry the day.
Lauper, who is very pregnant but looks great in lime-green tights, got the evening off to an audacious start, appearing at the soundboard and tromping into the crowd to high-five latecomers still scrambling to find their seats.
She showed great imagination in rearranging her early hit (and best song), Time After Time, for violin and (what appeared to be) a dulcimer. Sisters Of Avalon, the title cut from her most recent record, included the kind of testifying rarely heard outside a gospel church. And we were treated to the surreal sight of Cyndi, with an electric guitar strapped across her swollen belly, belting out Money Changes Everything, a sight I don't expect to quickly forget.
The audience was impressively peppered with Lauper partisans whose affection obviously remains strong. Lauper showed she was willing to work hard to earn that love, and maybe this is one '80s icon that deserves a second chance.
SUN RATING: 3 OUT OF 5
