reviews
Let’s face it: whether or not you believe in mediums, Theresa Caputo can put on a show.
And that’s exactly what she did at Borgata on Friday, July 22 at the sold-out Event Center. The star of Long Island Medium brought her signature blonde hair, long manicured nails, a sparkling rainbow-stripe dress, and her often times humorous and flamboyant personality to Atlantic City for an experience that’s hard to describe.
There was a point during the stand-up performance of comedian Steven Wright – who played the Borgata Music Box Friday Nov. 4 – when virtually everyone in the near-capacity crowd came to the same conclusion.
Steven Wright is insane.
Not clinically, of course, but hilariously insane. And it wasn’t just that he kept telling the crowd he was. Listening to Wright’s barrage of one-liners mixed in with strange – sometimes very strange – stories, the conclusion was inescapable. He is crazy funny.
You know Wright for his lethargic, deadpan delivery of ironic, sometimes philosophical one liners.
Since first bursting onto the punk scene in the 1970’s, Elvis Costello has been making music for nearly 50 years. That may seem like simple fact, but it took on a special relevance for the large crowd that saw Costello play Saturday at the Borgata Event Center.
Recently, Costello, now 62, has been drawing on a song catalog that has gained him distinction as one of the best songwriters of the last 50 years for a series of solo dates he dubbed a “Detour.” In that vein, Costello used his Borgata Event Center appearance to launch a two-week set of dates with his band the Imposters dubbed “The Imperial Bedroom & Other Chambers Tour,” highlighting his 1982 album Imperial Bedroom.
For an enthusiastic Borgata crowd, it was chance to see Costello’s emotional and deepest songwriting at his best, interspersed with just enough go-to hits to keep the crowd singing along.
Comedian Jim Gaffigan may seem like he’s everywhere these days. He stars in a series of pretty funny commercials for Chrysler, was one of the revolving Colonel Sanders in KFC’s ongoing ad campaign and just completed a run of the second season of “The Jim Gaffigan Show” on TV Land.
But despite all this TV, when Gaffigan rolled his Fully Dressed Tour into the Borgata Event Center Saturday for two shows, it was pretty evident what got Gaffigan to where he is – namely killer stand-up. Playing before two packed houses, Gaffigan unleashed a solid hour of wide ranging stand-up which covered everything from the changing seasons, the differences between ordering steak and fish (guess which one Gaffigan prefers) to travelling with his kids…
For music fans of a certain era, popular music was once dominated by one instrument above all others – the electric guitar. Sure, disco wasn’t that far removed from today’s EDM, and pop singers are always with us just like Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber are today.
But for these fans, music – real rock and roll music – comes from an electric guitar – not to mention blues and honky-tonk country music.
So it was with some nostalgia that several thousand old-school fans packed the Borgata Event Center Saturday to see two of the electric guitars most established and influential masters take the stage as blues legend Buddy Guy and rock legend Jeff Beck performed a double bill. Either one could have performed as a solo headliner, but to have both on the same bill resulted in about 2-and-a-half hours of guitar bliss – not bad for two septuagenarians.
The show started with an hour-long set by Guy who was appearing one week shy of his eightieth birthday. Considering that Guy began his career in the late 50’s, that’s a lot of shows under his belt.