Starting Again

It's a good feeling to have so much stuff to catch up with.  Here's the first go-round.

Hi everyone


Hope you all had a great New Year’s Eve.
Now and then I think back to those wild New Year's Eve shows that we used to do at Radio City in New York and at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles. They were such fun.

The Florida gigs were very exciting. If you were there – thanks for coming. Being accompanied by Florida’s Charlotte Symphony Orchestra was thrilling. They were so good, I nearly stopped singing and just listened to them!

Feel free to put some of those on ManilowTV.  You were so close and yet so far.  Not able to take out of state trips for a while.  But I know there were a lot of happy people in Florida.  Congrats!

Thanks for the nice things some of you wrote about the shows and the great photos too.

The shows at Paris Las Vegas keep getting more and more exciting. We rehearsed a new batch of songs for the show and I’ll be including them now and then. For this show, it’s very difficult to just choose a song and drop it in the way I’ve done at the Hilton or on tours. This magnificent production is so dependent on production (lights, video, moving parts of the stage) that it’s really impossible to just throw in a song here and there without the possibility of people getting hurt. So whenever I want to throw in a new song, it takes hours and hours to re-do lights and all the moving parts. But this week we spent three days inserting songs and they look and sound great.

Is the show that complicated that you can't do more than one version for exactly this scenario?  If you have different songs or sequences you want to include on occasion or just want to switch it up once in a while, how about just rehearsing different versions of the show?  No, I have no idea what I'm talking about, just throwing it out from how it looks in the audience.

Michael (Lloyd), my co-producer and I are done with the “15 Minutes” album. Fifteen original songs by Enoch Anderson and me with a very current idea – Fame…Can You Take It?
Here’s the liner notes that will be included with the credits of the album:

Fame... Can You Take It?

That’s the question jumping out at us daily from magazine covers, TV news, and online gossip sites. In my world of entertainment, I’ve watched perfectly decent and talented people achieve the success that they’ve been striving for, only to crash and burn as their star rises.

But it happens in every walk of life, not only the entertainment field. It happens in politics, in sports and in daily life when the assistant manager at the grocery store gets promoted.

Fame. Success.

When and if we get it, how do we handle it? Gratefully and inspiringly – or do we choose to go the other way and treat people badly and ourselves destructively?

This original album of songs, written by myself and the brilliant Enoch Anderson, tells the story of someone who wants fame, gets it, blows it and begins again.

Will he make better choices the second time around?

Who knows if he will? That’s for another album.

I hope you enjoy this album. Maybe you’ll see yourself in it. I do.

Barry Manilow

This is a great intro.  It's even more timely now for the population at large because of the growth of the internet - Facebook, websites, blogs (like this one), YouTube - and "reality" TV, where people put all of their business on TV.  People believe the line of shit show producers sell them, as well as their own fantasies, that all of their problems will be solved if they become famous by any means necessary.  You know better than anyone who reads this blog that none of that is true.  I wonder - was it ever frustrating talking to fans or whoever in the public who seem to think they know all about your life and think it's perfect and they really didn't have any idea?

The release date remains somewhere between March and May.  Stay tuned.

Feel free to narrow that down some.  I'm listening to your little stint on Chris Evans as I type this and I'm working on my next commentary.  Yes it's good, make sure you stop by.  As usual, more analysis, more questions.  I seriously want to hear the rest of this record.

I also wanted to let you know that we lost one of our two beloved pups on New Year’s Eve. She was only five. It’s killing all of us, the family, the band, the crew, the singers. Terrible. Please donate to your local animal shelter.

I am really sorry to hear this.  I understand.  I'm more a cat person and one time we had 3 in the house. I had to make the call to put down the oldest about 3 years ago when she showed the first stage of multi-organ failure.  My husband didn't think I had the guts to do it.  My eldest daughter was only 2 at the time and didnt' understand why Mommy was trying not to cry and telling her to "say goodbye to kitty".  We had a great vet - they all signed a sympathy card for the family.  Point is, I understand and my heart goes out to you.

Until next time,

Ditto

Love,
Barry

YBA