An Intimate Evening with Beyonce

Beyonce's Sunday night concert at Roseland Ballroom was the first of four nights she's doing at the venue. It sold out in 22 seconds, and I didn't even hear about it. But through outstanding luck, I managed to grab a ticket that was released on Ticketmaster on Sunday morning. Not just that, but I guess I somehow managed to get a VIP mezzanine spot? Hey--I'm not asking any questions!

Let's just start with getting into the venue. 8:00 concert. I got there at 7:40, expecting a short line and a venue that would mostly already be filled with die-hard fans. After all, I heard a rumor that folks had camped out overnight in the rain for the best spots. That proved true. Unfortunately, as of 8:00, they hadn't even opened the venue doors. I tried to ask a security guard where to go. That was...less than helpful. So i figured I'd just hop on the line and hope that will-call and ticket-holders all were in the same place. Which proved true. As I followed the line down 52nd, then up Broadway to 53rd, I started to have a sinking feeling. As I walked to 8th Avenue, then followed the line back down to 52nd, the feeling was plain old sunk. I eventually landed back where I started and discovered a mass of people in the middle of the street because there was nowhere else to go. So I stood on that line. In the rain. For two hours. If I had to stay downstairs in the teeming mass of people crammed wall to wall, I probably would have bludgeoned someone to death with an umbrella. Instead, I got to head upstairs to the mezzanine which had a totally comfortable number of people and grabbed a spot at the back, leaning on a railing, with space for my umbrella and dripping bag. I may have missed out on some crowd enthusiasm, but I was delighted to be tucked away somewhere dry without anyone bumping into me. I am getting OLD. Since this is mostly a theater blog, I'll note that I was right behind Jonathan Groff and Sister Act's Patina Miller.

ANYhoo, let's talk about the show. The first 45 minutes were fucking weird. Beyonce's a hell of a performer. Duh. Backed with a 20 piece band and about six back-up dancers, it became clear that "intimate" is in the eye of the beholder. B led the audience through her career chronologically from the start. No, seriously, she started with her musical inspirations and songs she sang as a kid to train. Hey now, Jackson 5. As she narrated her career, "So then it's 2006, and I recorded...," she performed snippets of her songs. Like, if we were lucky, we got a verse and a chorus. Sometimes, we settled for less. "Hey, you remember 'Bugaboo?'" she asked. "You're buggin what, you're buggin' who...anyway, that was 2002." Two moments from this section really stand out. First, let me mention that while Beyonce is the consummate professional, she's also always been deeply guarded. She connects with the audience without ever seeming to reveal all that much about herself. So it was nice when she told us that her record company informed her that her first album didn't have one hit single on it. She then rattled off the songs and said, "So I guess they were right. I didn't have one hit single. I had five." It was braggy and snotty, but it felt real. And I appreciated that. Before that, she told a story about all of these record execs coming to watch Destiny's Child audition, and how her father stopped the audition, asked Beyonce if she had gone swimming the night before because she sounded "all snotty," then announced that the group wasn't ready yet and canceled the rest of the audition. And then she was just like, "Well, I guess he was right. We weren't ready." Um...excuse me? Does she seriously not see what a dick move that was? My eyes were bulging out of my head. Mesmerizing.

In any case, she focused mostly on Destiny's Child, then did one song from each of her first three albums: "Crazy in Love" she got all the way through. "Irreplaceable" she actually just made the audience sing. And then she did "Single Ladies" because, I mean...she has to. The whole thing was this bizarre mix of lines sung here and there, lots of narrative, and a solid amount of dancing. It was just a little cold.

BUT. Then she moved on to the new album, and dayum. Once we were in the section of the night when she actually sang whole songs, the bitch Turned. It. Out. 4 isn't the fastest album. There's a lot of slow or mid-tempo stuff, and there are one or two duds, but I think that on a whole it's the strongest album she's done to date. She played almost everything consecutively, meaning that this part of the concert kicked off with my favorite track off the album, "1 + 1." Are the lyrics good? No. But push comes to shove, no one can deliver a song quite like the lady in question, and the lead song is throaty, sexy perfection. From then on, it was 45 straight minutes of knockouts that mostly managed to negate the weird sort of stage memoir that preceded it. With vocals better than I've ever heard her sound, energy that wouldn't quit, and a minimum of audience interaction (which isn't her strongest suit), it was sheer musical prowess with some fucking impressive dancing thrown in for good measure. I was trying to figure out why she might be doing these four small venue nights with the new material. I don't believe she's someone who makes decisions just for the fun of it. If I had to guess, she's trying all of the material out live in front of an audience she knows will love it, but there could also be a healthy dose of market research happening--what WILL that next single be? My guess? The thoroughly infectious "Countdown." Oddly, the only songs for which she transposed the order are the last two on the album. She moved "Run the World" up a slot so she could close on a ballad. Unfortunately, that ballad was the Diane Warren song "I Was Here," a terrible, treacly mess that Warren says was inspired by 9/11 which makes me want to punch her in the face.

Bottom line: half a not-great concert, half balls-to-the-wall amazing. I couldn't think of a better way to see her live for the first time. Well...maybe less waiting and less rain.