Kathryn Campus typed the article.

This article is about the Ledyard (Foxwoods) concert (Nov 10, 1995).

 

LAUPER SHOWS SOME OF THE OLD FIRE

A dozen years ago, it was Cyndi Lauper who got the Grammy as best new artist and Madonna who was supposed to be the momentary fad.

 

Sometimes sex sells more reliably than song, and today Madonna is the entertainment mogul and Lauper is trying to regain a bit of the momentum that launched her career with such a splash in the '80s.

 

Lauper's latest effort is a greatest hits collection, Twelve Deadly Cyns ... And Then Some. An international hit when it was released last year, it was only a curiosity when it was finally released in the United States in July.

 

Her appearance at Foxwoods Resort Casino this weekend is one of just a handful of American performances before she embarks on a six-week tour of Japan.

 

The opener of her three-night stand Friday was not sold out, but it drew a lot of loyal fans, friends from her New York home, and even her mother, who portrayed herself in her daughter's first video Girls Just Want to Have Fun.

 

What's more, the band Lauper assembled, apparently for her tour abroad, may be her strongest ever, with three of the musicians also providing strong female backing voices. And there was all manner of unique instrumentation, especially the violin of Larry Campbell, who also played guitar and mandolin.

 

There was a fresh sound to the four new songs that started the show, making them fascinating although they remained largely unfamiliar to the audience. At 42, Lauper still looks like a kid, wearing a loose white blouse over stretch pants with her hair poofed up in a short yellow bob.

 

Four songs in, she played something somewhat familiar -- a barely recognizable She Bop done with acoustic guitar and piano as if it were a classic folk song.

 

She took similar license with a lot of her other hits, beginning All Through the Night starkly, to a marimba sound and a bare lightbulb; True Colors accompanied only by violin; and, in the encore, Time After Time, in a beautiful unplugged version.

 

The signature song of Twelve Deadly Cyns is a remake of Girls Just Want to Have Fun that adds a bit of a reggae flavor and the chorus of an old hit by one of the few Native American rock groups, Redbone, Come and Get Your Love. Hey Now (Girls Just Want to Have Fun), as it is now called, works well at an Indian casino.

 

So did the final song, which summed up her own situation as it did that for gamblers (and state lawmakers mulling gambling) outside: Money Changes Everything.

 

Lauper performs at Foxwoods again tonight at 9 and Sunday at 8 p.m.