Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Dolly Parton For Vice-President!

With Willie Nelson as President, natch.

We went to see Dolly Parton in concert here in Manchester last night. She was superb, as expected.

Two minor negatives first before I gush about her brilliance though. First off if you bother to get a box at the MEN Arena to see someone like Dolly why the fuck do you then spend the entire concert talking and laughing loudly as as to irritate everyone else? People like that should be kicked out and never allowed to return, the tits.

Also we were slightly disappointed she didn't do her version of Put A Little Love In Your Heart which we had as the recessional at the wedding, btu since it's not one of her big hits we weren't really surprised she didn't. It's just a song that means a lot to us so it'd have been brilliant to hear her doing it live. The fact she didn't do it doesn't however detract from the rest of the concert.

I was sort of hoping that she'd do a moslty bluegrass concert but wasn't surprised that it was a little more mainstream than that. I guess she tailors her concerts to the type of audience that she can expect and in Europe I would think more so than America people will be going to see her for the big mainstream C&W hits she's had rather than the bluegrass. That said the bluegrass songs she did do for the most part got the audience going more than some of the more mainstream ones.

Anyway, so she did all the stuff you'd expect like Her You Come Again and Jolene and 9 To 5 and Islands In The Stream, all of which were fabulous. She also really showed how good her voice is when she did a mostly acapella version of Little Sparrow and the Norah Jones version of The Grass Is Blue (one of my favourite Dolly songs) that was just her playing the piano and the backing singers joining her for the last verse. She really does have a brilliantly clear and note perfect voice that most pop starlets of today would die for. She also seems to be able to play every single musical instrument in the world. As well as singing (and chattering away) for two hours she played the piano, the banjo, the harmonica, a whistle, a steel guitar, acoustic guitar, rhythm guitar and a dulcimer. All with inch long nails. It makes you sick, ti really does. The fact that she's that good a singer, that good a musician and a very, very good business woman. Plus she comes across as being a genuinely nice person.

Some of her banter was probably very well rehearsed but it didn't really come across like that. She told stories about her songs and her career and her family and made tons of jokes at her own expense. At one point she was talking about her hair and her boobs and them all being fake and said 'Lord, I'm so phoney. The only real part of me left is my heart' which kind of summed up perfectly why she's so good. She knows she's about the glitz and the camp and the show but she's also, deep down, just a very, very good musician with a brilliant voice. She gives you this impression of being one thing and then hits you with the real Dolly afterwards.

After she'd done Coat Of Many Colours (again mostly just her singing and playing the dulcimer) she said she'd got a letter from a little boy who had coem to see the concert for his 9th birthday and has always wanted to meet her. She said she probably wouldn't be able to meet him (whetehr because she really couldn't or because she just doesn't do meeting fans after concerts isn't really important) but she dedicated Coat Of Many Colours to him because it was his favourite song and then got the entire arena (since it was sold out that must have been 20,000 people at least) to sing Happy Birthday to him. That's something he's not going to forget for a while.

So all in all an utterly brilliant night. Sometimes you go to a concert fully expecting teh performer's singing voice not to live up to the standard of their recordings and sometimes, as with Dolly (and k d lang and Willy Nelson) they prove to be even better than their recordings. She's marvellous, she really is.

Oh, and as to the newspaper reviews I've seen that have been spectacularly snotty about the whole thing especially the performance of I Dreamed About Elvis, poo to them. That song was silly and fun and the guy being Elvis wasn't half bad and it was just a moment in the show where she fully embraced the silliness of some her her persona and enjoyed it for what it is. there aren't many performers that can encompasse silliness, camp and glitz and then turn around and perform a song with so much heart and soul that you feel like they're singing just to you. Dolly does that.

I’ve just been speaking to Sue (my line-manager) about Dolly because I have my Dolly t-shirt on and it turns out she knows the little boy who we all sang happy birthday to on Tuesday! He came down with his Mum and Grandma and he and his Mum were staying in the Lowry Hotel because it was only a bit more expensive than the Travel Inn and partially because they knew Dolly was staying there. So he wrote a letter to Dolly (on pink paper with sparkly bits. I suspect he may grow up to be a leetle bit of a queen) and they were going to give it to the reception desk to ask if they’d give it to Dolly when they saw a guy coming out of the lift who turned out to be the dancer/Elvis and asked him if he’d give it to Dolly. Obviously he did because we sang happy birthday to him. She was going straight up to Newcastle the same night though so he didn’t get to meet her but they did go backstage and met all the band and stuff and her manager then came up to them and invited them to the after show party in Sheffield next week. How cool is that? Dolly rocks so much.

Bevis,

It sounds like you had the best time. Dolly isn't really my cup of tea, but I also get the sense that she is a very caring and honest person. I think if she had the time, she would have met with the boy.

It's kind of weird. I have always thought of coutry and bluegrass music as being such an "American" thing. It always amazes me to hear that it's got fans around the world.

Dolly appeared on CMT Giants: Reba McIntyre a few months ago, and to me she was one of the biggest highlights of an all-around great concert. Her performances are always energetic, yet her singing just comes across as so effortless... the music just flows from her. And her sense of humor just makes you want to laugh along with her.

Country has been growing in popularity in teh Uk at least for the last five, maybe ten years, or so. It's still not mainstream but Dolly sold out the MEN twice which means about 40,000 people saw her here alone and she's doing quite a few more dates as well in almost as big arenas (the MEN is the bigegst indoor arena in Europe but it's still nto majorly bigger than a lot of them). I can't think of any C&W singles that have been big hits in the singles charts recently but certainly people like the Dixie Chicks and Faith Hill have had quite big album sales that put them near the top of teh album charts. Bluegrass is still a little way behind in terms of popularity but we've seen Alison Krauss and Union Station a few times in slightly smaller venues that were sold out as well so it has got a foothold. You do still get some of the mainstream press sneering at it a bit as being Anmerican Trash and the like but more and more people are realising that it's actually quite close to folk and traditional music rather than some bizarre American-only music style (and of course the mainstream press is just as likely to sneer at folk as it is at country...). There are a few artists breaking in here by havign a more crossover style (people like Leanne Rimes for example) but it's not the minority music that it used to be in the early 90s.

Dolly's humour is great. Even when you knew she was telling anecdotes or making quips she always uses she just filled them with such a sense of fun that it didn't matter. She's very good at making you feel like she's talking just to you rather tahn to everyone in a vast arena. And of course the more I hear about what she does for people in her home county (and around the world) without making a big hullaballo about it the more I respect and admire her. A great musical talent, a great business woman and apparently a genuinly nice person as well. It'd make you sick if she wasn't so lovely.

We used to get Graham Norton here on BBC America, and she was my favorite guest. He gave her a specially-designed, rhinestone covered "boob pillow", which she said she would give to her husband so he wouldn't miss her when she was on the road He also did a special where he traveled to America to visit Dollywood, and the two of them did a duet of Islands in the Stream.

Oh he's a huge Dolly fanboy. First time she was on the show I remember him absolutely geeking out in a way I've never seen before. In a way i think he's probably partly responsible for bringing her back to the forefront of the collective consciousness in the UK. She's certainly very much loved here even if a lot of people think she's a bit of a joke. Thing is she fully plays up to that since she obviously knows that it's teh persona as much as the actual talent that sells the records.