Fair Use of programme art for identification purposes – click here.
This was the third pf a trio of concert visits with “The West End Client” crowd. Again I am sure Rosemarie Whitely and Suan Yap would have been there – I think Rosemarie was a keen Anita fan. Stephen Lee probably organised it.
The other concerts we saw in that first half of 1990 were, in reverse sequence, Luther Vandross…
…and Paul McCartney:
Anyway, I recall that this Anita Baker concert was very good indeed. Possibly, in truth, suffering from the same problem I nearly always felt at Wembley Arena – too big a venue for that act. I guess I got spoilt at Keele seeing great act in a venue for 1,000 people. Wembley Arena is more than 10 times that capacity.
Sadly this was the last concert I saw with that group, as I did my catastrophic back knack just a week later. But I wasn’t to know that while listening to the sweet tones of Anita Baker’s voice.
Here is a link to information about the tour and the set we heard.
I cannot find any video of Anita performing live on that tour. But here is one of the tracks from her Compositions album which she did perform on that tour:
Here is a short clip of her performing live perhaps three or four years earlier:
Here is an excellent piece about Anita from the Observer a few days before the show:
Alan Jackson On Anita Baker Sun, Jun 10, 1990 – 53 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Here is Robert Yates’s Guardian review a few days after the show:
Robert Yates on Anita Baker Mon, Jun 18, 1990 – 34 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com