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THE EUROPEAN TOUR 1998
REVIEW
Review By Christiane - Ashchaffenburg, Germany 11 July 1998
Hi there, as I have taken so much information from
your site, I feel now it is time to give something back.
I have been to the Whitney concert in Aschaffenburg last Saturday and it was an exquisite
experience. Rarely have I seen Whitney Houston as emotional as she has been this Saturday.
She obviously had tremendous problems with her voice, probably due to a cold. The first
three songs went just smoothly but then her voice failed her now and again. She tried hard
though and explained to us that she wanted to give her all for us on this special
occasion, it was after all a concert for UNICEF. Her fans did not mind and cheered through
her hard times. I noticed something - maybe not so - peculiar: Whenever she sung the word
"baby", she touched her belly, which to me seemed somewhat enlarged. I have been
told by a friend of mine who had seen the Berlin concert that she did not do that during
her Berlin concert. I certainly do not want to start a rumour but I think it is worth
noting.
Although it was uncalled for, the 20-minute power breakdown had us see Whitney entertain
50,000 people without a micro or those huge screens at her disposal. She did not leave the
stage, talked to those nearest to the stage who had been calling out to her on numerous
occasions and she waited patiently to continue her show. When the power supply finally got
going, she assured us that whatever may have happened, she would not have left us. Towards
the end of the show, when she introduced her magnificent (as usual) band to us, and her
Mum and brother she started to get emotional and you could actually see that she started
choking on her words. Somehow something must have gotten to her but it seemed increasingly
difficult to her not to cry. Every time she choked with tears and looked at her audience
asking them to forgive her, it made me want to take her in my arms and comfort her. She
told us that at one point she had actually thought about leaving the stage life and the
singing career behind us but 50,000 people assured her that this would be the wrong thing
to do.
When she started singing "I will always love you" there was no way that she
could hold back her tears. She went over to her brother and they hugged intensely and - so
it seemed - for ages. Tears streaming down her face she restarted the song, choking
several times and when it finally came to the line "I will always love you", she
again touched her belly. No touching is the wrong word, she actually carressed it - draw
conclusions for yourself. After this song which I had never seen her perform so full of
emotions as this time she left the stage and it took us some heavy cheering and encoring
to get her back on stage - she obviously needed those minutes to pull herself together.
She came back out to sing "Step by Step" which she did with a vigour hardly seen
before. If it had been for me, this concert could have gone on forever. All in all, it was
a hugely successfull concert, she clearly enjoyed herself on stage and I have never heard
her talk so much. She was very entertaining, too, although 95 % of the people did not
understand her witty remarks as you could tell from their reaction. However, I fear that
the critics and papers will not talk about the concert as enthusiastically as I do, since
they only look at what they get, not at what is all behind such a performance. And I do
have to concede that I have been to concerts where her voice was much more magnificent
(e.g. Copenhagen 1993) but at all the other concerts she NEVER put so much heart in it as
she did this time. For me it was the second best concert when it comes to her singing, and
the best concert when it comes to entertaining. Don't get me wrong, I do not regard her
wearing her emotions on the sleeve as entertaining - I speak of the rest of the concert.
I hope you enjoyed this little report on her concert. All the best Christiane
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© 1999 Manish
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