She might not be as light on her toes as she was in her heyday but disco queen Gloria Gaynor still knows how to belt out a number and engage an audience.
She cleverly utilised a magnificent band with two vivacious female backing singers for all their worth and at 64-years-old, could be forgiven for disappearing off stage for no obvious reason on several occasions. Perhaps she was just having a lie down, or needed a comfort break between numbers, but the band with brass, guitars, keyboard and drums, picked up the slack and kept the capacity audience singing and clapping along. At first I thought she might have used the time for a costume change but she was obviously comfy in her granny attire and her voice alone was able to keep the soul-loving crowd spellbound and satisfied. You could have heard a pin drop when she delivered a magnificent version of Michael Jackson’s I’ll be There with the third backing vocalist, Harvey Hubert, a man who possessed a mightily-impressive vocal range of his own. The sweetness of Gaynor’s voice came to the fore with the soul classic Killing Me Softly and her own penned Listen With Your Heart, and she called on the girls again to help with a highly-charged rendition of MacArthur Park in tribute to the late, great Donna Summer. But the majority of the crowd were no doubt at the Spring of Culture event to hear the chart-topping 1979 hit I Will Survive, the very reason the good lady wife, Kathryn, refused to accompany me to the gig because she had seen too many friends crucify the number when karaoke bars were all the rage. Gloria killed it and the crowd whooped it up and couldn’t help but join in the chorus. The enthusiasm of the 50-somethings in the audience was impressive as they pressed forward to dance the night away, touch the star’s hands or have their photo taken up close to the stage, so much so that the security guards shuffled along in case there was a geriatric stampede. We called for more ‘Gloria, Gloria, Gloria’ in unison and she waddled back on stage for an encore entitled I Just Keep Thinkin’ About You, Babe. I keep thinking about the Winter Gardens Banbury, circa 1979; great days of disco dancing in Oxford Bags covering seven-inch platform heels … cool, skinny and proud to say I Am What I Am. What a shame, I’m now fat and in my mid-fifties and I’m sad that my heroes and heroines are showing their age too. But what memories we share …
