When he came to their side of the stage, grown women rushed toward him. When he pointed to people clutching Puerto Rican flags, they swooned with pride. When he stopped singing mid-line, the crowd finished his lyric for him -- every time.
Rarely has there been such a cultural hero at the State Fair grandstand. But Marc Anthony had the grandstand crowd carrying on Thursday like they were witnessing Elvis Presley, Bob Marley and Michael Jackson rolled into a crisp black suit. Actually, Anthony, 41, came across like the Latin Frank Sinatra. Skinny, sexy, suave. Divinely romantic, hopelessly dramatic (he is Latin) and unstoppably charismatic. Scurrying from side to side on the big grandstand stage, he oozed sweaty joy -- even if you were a gringo who didn't know what the words meant. In short, olé!
Anthony may be best known to the masses as the soon-to-be ex-husband of Jennifer Lopez. But to the 3,155 Minnericans at the fair, he's the king of salsa. A New Yorker of Puerto Rican heritage, he has sold more than 11 million albums. Only two of his albums have been in English, and he opened Thursday's 95-minute show with his first English hit, 1999's pleading "I Need to Know." He was all splayed legs, swivel hips and total rock star with his teardrop dark glasses.
The rest of the night was devoted mostly to his older salsa favorites. They'd typically start like a ballad, with either acoustic guitar or piano, followed by Anthony's elastic tenor crooning. The tempo would pick up, often building to a percussive groove delivered by a terrific 13-member band (plus three backup singers) and enhanced by rhythmically frantic strobe lights. Solos usually went to a keyboardist, the horn section, conga or timbales player, not a guitarist. And the singer listened intently to his musicians, as if he were preparing to respond vocally to their playing.
Anthony knows how to sell a song -- with his rangy voice, dramatic gestures, live-wire energy, diverse dance steps (from little cha-cha moves to loose-limbed strutting) and intense, piercing eyes (he took off the shades). He is one magnetic performer. That was clear when I saw him on Broadway in Paul Simon's little-seen "The Capeman" in 1998, when I saw his only previous Twin Cities performance in '99 at the Orpheum and when I've seen him on TV (he's on TNT's "Hawthorne") or in movies.
As far as Anthony's lyrics, 2000's "You Sang to Me," his only other English song at the fair, was hopelessly simple-minded. (He didn't perform "Rain Over Me," his current single with rapper Pitbull.) If that's his style, I didn't need to know the meaning of the words of his Spanish songs. He communicated with his emotional voice. He was so pained on "Y Como Es El" that it was obvious what this big, overwrought sad ballad was about. The ebullient "Nadie Como Ella" -- the night's most intense number -- joyously turned the grandstand plaza into one caliente salsa dance floor.
Between songs, Anthony spoke mostly in English. He mentioned this was the opening night of his U.S. tour, which could have explained the extralong pauses in darkness between songs and why his voice sounded a little strained at full-volume wail. At one point, he spotted two women near the front of the stage and blurted: "I don't know how they got up here in mini-skirts and pumps. I tried that once. Old college days. We're not going to start any more rumors. That's not true."
Anyone looking to address rumors probably stayed home for the second half of Thursday's Marc Anthony doubleheader as he spoke (in a taped interview) on ABC's "Nightline" about the breakup of his marriage to J. Lo.
