Product: Cher: Extravaganza - Live at the Mirage [VHS] (1992)
Rating: 5.0
A Fully Realized Performance
For those of you who notice how people are so drawn to this multi-faceted and talented star, this is the concert that tells you why. The show, shot in 1991 toward the end of her Heart Of Stone Tour, is the result and culmination of many years of hard work and reinvention. In her own eyes, Cher is always Cher, but the public perception of her has changed through the years, and it is easy to see that in retrospect. Throughout her 60's folk-rock era and subsequent nightclub act, from her transformation to Vogue model and TV variety star, then Vegas act and Disco diva, Cher persevered. But it was her 1980 stint as lead singer in a band, Black Rose, where the public was given a hint of what was truly inside this woman. The band was not a hit, but Cher's instinct to do full head-on Rock and Roll was. Combining that element with her knowledge of making a pop song her own is Cher's greatest gift.So when it came time to record again after six years, after establishing true artistic credibility as an actress, she applied that same passion to turn out the hits, "I Found Someone", "We All Sleep Alone", "After All", and her now all-time classic "If I Could Turn Back Time", which was released right before the start of the tour in 1989. This DVD release is the CBS special that aired by tour's end.All the extra tracks on the previously released VHS version appear on the DVD as Bonus Songs. You get everything, plus more. The extras are superb.Among my favorite cover tracks are Eddie Money's "Hold On" (it wonderfully suits her vocal style), her rockin', sexy take on Greg Allman's "I'm No Angel", and the unforgettable gem "Many Rivers To Cross", which Cher sings as though she wrote it herself (she gave all of us in the audience chills when I first heard her sing it in Atlantic City - I heard her sing in a way I never heard - her true heart, soul and guts are in that song). That song, more than any other, demonstrates a Cher rarely heard on CD.What is particularly special is that with the angle button on your DVD remote you can access different performances of the same song from various stages of her tour. You get some that show her in rehearsal before a private audience, and you get some showing clips from the beginning of the "Heart Of Stone Tour 89" before it became "Tour 90" (I saw both in person, and to my surprise, I was in attendance during one of the clips!). Cher had a hand in this DVD version, and what she gives here is a real treat for the collector.As someone who met her three times, I remember the first time when I mentioned how I loved Black Rose, and that direction for her musically. With "Live At The Mirage" her vision is fully realized.Even with her style changes in the late nineties - by that time Cher evolved into a Techno-Dance queen - it is hard to categorize her. Cher is a category unto herself. If you love the rock goddess, fear no more, for I predict the ultimate rock resurrection is soon to come.