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Paulina Rubio's Gran City Pop tour rocks the Fox
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What? You've never heard of Paulina Rubio? That's a damn shame because the Latin world's equivalent of Madonna rolled into Oakland's gorgeous Fox Theater Saturday night and just killed it before an adoring audience and you probably missed it. She's been making records since 1992, has sold 20 million of them worldwide and the last three are delicious confections of solid pop that rival anything you've heard in sung in English during the last decade.
She's also an incredibly generous performer. The stage was crashed by a couple of guys and when the bouncers lept into action Pau waved them off, saying "it's okay" and then she turned one song into a duet with a lucky dude whose bragging rights will now be legendary . She also pulled a couple of women from the audience, handed them live microphones and let them be her back-up singers during another song- and they did a really great job.
After our preliminary cocktails we walked half a block to the newly renovated Fox Theater. There was some confusion as to whether or not Paulina was going to have an opening act, so we decided to go in, though there are a a couple a good-looking places across the street that beckoned. Let me give a huge round of applause to Another Planet for the fantastic job they did with this place. It's a gorgeous venue and seems to me to be the coolest place in the Bay Area to see a show.
Initially we were told Paulina's band was going to do a half hour set before she came out for a planned hour and a half. That never happened. The lights go down and La Chica Dorada hits the stage in a get-up that outdid Lady Gaga at the VH1 awards and the audience just freaked. It seems everyone had an IPhone and all of a sudden Pau was being filmed by every male in the pit. I really wished I'd brought my camera.
Concentrating on material from her past five albums, Pau delivered a set that was high on energy and low on pretense. Her band was okay, but their role is really just to keep the hooks coming and that they did. She had two only back-up singers, a male and female (an improvement over the completely unnecessary trio of back-up singers from the last tour) who were fun, but I do wish Paulina would realize she is best when she's the only one onstage and just strip it down. The woman is that captivating a performer- anyone else onstage is just unnecessary though the woman back-up singer was hot in a Sheila E. cum Catherine Zeta-Jones in "Chicago" kind of way,
The highlights? Certainly "Ni Rosas ni Juguetes" and the encore "Causa y Efecto" from the new album, "Ayudame" and "Adiosito Corazon," but really every song was delivered with a verve and enthusiasm that had the entire place jumping from start to finish. The only disappointment were songs that didn't make the set, notably "Ojala" and "Tu Y Yo." Regardless, it was a great performance and she had the audience eating out of her hand for the entire set.
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