Janet Jackson, Dynamo Diva, Pleases California Performance
Debra Levine
Posted: 12/ 5/11 04:15 PM ETTwenty minutes after Janet Jackson's much-anticipated "Number Ones: Up Close and Personal" gala concert was scheduled to start on Thursday evening at Palm Desert's McCallum Theatre, some in the audience began to squirm in their seats. The theater's silver-haired, black-tied patrons, though geared for an unusual performance, were unaccustomed to late-starting rock shows.
Suddenly, into the theater and up an aisle rushed an entourage. Burly body guards surrounded a familiar figure. It was the matriarch, Katherine Jackson, appearing only days after the sentencing in the murder trial of her fifth son, Michael. Her third son, Jermaine, 56, hastened by her side as the group of about eight filed into the theater's only empty row. The house lights dimmed, and the stage came alive.
Janet Jackson, 45, had held the show for her mother's arrival. In a welter of mixed feelings for this beleaguered American show-biz family, the performance began.
Jackson, a hearty trouper, plunged in, delivering a nearly two-hour concert without an intermission. Warbling in her soft but steady voice that occasionally fluttered to the top of her range, she led a stageful of performers -- seven dancers, a six-piece band and three back-up singers -- through a tightly packaged evening of her hit songs primarily from the 1990s. Out they poured, one after the other,
Pleasure Principle, Control, What Have You Done For Me Lately, Miss You Much, Nasty, Escapade, When I Think Of You, That's The Way Love Goes, Scream, Rhythm Nation. The five-time Grammy award winner, literally dressed in battle gear, presented herself on this impressive bedrock of pop music.
It was wonderful to see Jackson looking healthy and well after the haunting vision of her brother's decline. In the intimate 1,127-seat McCallum, we got a good glimpse of her. Her widespread Kohl-lined eyes dotting her sweet diamond face, she shook her headful of Shirley Temple curls (only, jet black), sometimes scrunching it with her hand. All of this bobbed prettily atop her fulsome figure. The Jackson family's remaining scion carts the baggage of a myriad body looks -- from anorectic to plump. While she was not an ounce overweight, on Thursday she arrived fully loaded. It was fun to watch -- her padded hips, shapely butt, long haunches, and lovely feminine torso.
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