I've decided to put some classic reviews to some older albums that are out there and still are available through many different outlets to purchase these classic greats from I hope you will enjoy the review and maybe if you own the album it might spark you to pull something out you might not have heard in a while and take a stroll down memory lane for a little while.
This classic 1987 movie that starred Patrick Swayze & Jennifer Grey inspired not one but two spectacular soundtracks to the motion picture that featured some of today's and yesterday's artists on the two soundtracks. The two original soundtracks which were Dirty Dancing and More Dirty Dancing featured such artists as The Ronnettes, Otis Redding, Micky & Sylvia, The Contours, The Drifters, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes, Eric Carmen, Patrick Swayze and so many more, that it inspired a live concert tour in 1988 and it featured Bill Medley, Merry Clayton, Eric Carmen and The Contours. The host/announcer on the tour was "Cousin" Brucie Morrow who is a big radio disc jockey from the late 1950s right up to the present and can still be heard on Sirius XM. radio
This concert was recorded in Los Angeles, California and opens with Merry Clayton performing her track from the original soundtrack entitled "Yes", which is a great dance tune and a very uplifting positive song to hear, Clayton then performs another song from the movie but although not the original performer in the movie but still does a superb job on it anyways and that's "Overload" , we then move on to Eric Carmen who had so many hits in the seventies and eighties, with the seventies it was with his group the Raspberries and then he would go solo to make some monster classics including "All By Myself", Carmen comes out with his hit "Make Me Lose Control" which is a great piece for this concert seeing as we're going down memory lane with classic oldies and he mentions a few in their like "Uptown" by the Crystals, and "stand By Me" by Ben E. KIng such a fitting song, he then goes in to doing another classic eighties ballad "Almost Paradise" originally performed by him and Nancy Wilson of the group Heart, the track was featured in another big dance movie from a few years prior to Dirty Dancing and that would be Kevin Bacon's "Footloose" from 1984, but seeing as Nancy wasn't there to help out on her parts they substituted in Merry Clayton which gave the track a somewhat different vibe but she made it her own every night on the tour, then Eric closed out with a song as he put it that Jennifer and Patrick did a little dirty dancing to and of course that was his monster hit from the soundtrack "Hungry Eyes" which is also featured in so many television commercials as well and the performance was so spot on you would have thought you were listening to the album or you were hearing it on the radio. The Contours are the next performaers in the show being that they are from the legendary Motown label and they charted with a couple of hits I recall one is in the movie of course and that's "do You Love Me" the other hit from them is "First I Look At The Purse" which sadly they do not perform in the concert they come out opening their set with "Get Ready" the Temptations hit and they do an adequate job on their take of it, they then follow up with Solomon Burke's classic "Cry To Me" which is of course featured in the film, before they do an elongated version of "Do You Love Me" they have the "Dirty Dancers come out to perform a dance from the movie and the dancers try to show how to do the grind dance featured in the scene of the movie with the song, the contours then perform their hit and leave the stage for the final performer which is Bill Medley, yes half of the legendary blue eyed soul duo The Righteous Brothers, and Bill comes out smokin' with a fifties medley of songs starting with "Let The Good Times Roll" originally performed by Shirly and Lee then the medley continues with a rousing version of Frankie Ford's "Sea Cruise" which anyone who covers this tune has done a fantastic job, we then slow the show down with a classic Righteous Brothers tuen "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" and I must say even though Bobby Hatfield is not present singing his high parts Medley still pulls off the song, but then why wouldn't he be able to as Elvis Presley performed it in his live shows in the seventies as a solo artist and had no help singing it, now we move back to getting the crowd energized again before closing the show with a rockin' version of Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" which I will say is not the most impressive version i've heard someone cover of it, this is one song that only the original performer and songwriter of this tune can do, infact not many people have braved trying to perform it at least in live shows such as this but as always it is a crowd getter so Bill takes his shot and throws his hat in the ring for his rendition of the song and then closes out the show with the biggest hit probably of the movie which is "I've Had THe TIme Of My Life" and he does perform it with a female singer but they never introduced her to the audience or even in the liner notes or the credits of the live show that did come out in 1988 on VHS tape.
All in all this show is a timeless classic of performances that you sincerely wish you could have gone back in time to see this writer was around at the time, but I do not recall the show ever coming through the new england area, cause I think my family and I would have been there to see this show as my whole family was a fan of the movie especially my departed mother, we probably played the soundtracks on vinyl hundreds if not thoughsands of times with all the great classic music contained in the two volumes of the soundtrack.
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