Hi Everyone,

This month’s MTV is a video back by popular demand! And I understand why. It’s one of my favorite videos too.

It’s “Manilow-Close-Up” – songs from the 1998 tour of the UK.

It always amazes me when I look at any of the performances on this video.

To think that there were only five musicians, a few lighting men and our brilliant house sound man Ken Newman.

And it’s as entertaining as if it were a full blown produced show.

Hope you enjoy this one again.

Love,
Barry

Here’s the note I wrote when we aired it the first time in 2021:

Happy New Year!

Thank goodness 2020 is over! Hope 2021 is better. It can’t possibly be any worse!

This month’s MTV is another rare video.

Some of you may remember the “Reminiscing” tour. It was one of the most interesting and exciting tours we’ve ever created.

My two technical genius friends David Benson and Greg Bartheld helped me to create what we called the “Wheel ‘O Barry”; a roulette-type wheel which was filled with all of the albums I had recorded up ‘till then. We would hand out a garage clicker to a random member of the audience. When they clicked their clicker, the wheel would spin and then I would hit my clicker and the wheel would stop on an album and we would do songs from that album.

The band and I knew what songs we would do from each album, but we never knew what album was going to come up.

It sure did keep us on our toes every night!

My band was made up of only five musicians. No background singers since three of them sang. And really, these guys were sensational.

Between their incredible talent and Ken Newman’s amazing house mix we all sounded fantastic.

The show has 90 minutes of songs, arrangements and stories that I’d never done and haven’t done since that UK tour in 1998. Songs like “No Other Love/If I Should Love Again”, “As Time Goes By” and “We Live On Borrowed Time”. There are many big surprises in this show.

We released a DVD that we called “Close-Up” because each song was filmed with the “Close -Up camera that projected video on to the big screens in the arenas.

I know you’ll all love this month’s video so enjoy the show, have a great new year and stay safe.

Love,
Barry