LIZA: "I WAS SEXY"

I can't believe Liza's TV special LIZA WITH A "Z"is being released on dvd. But then again, I've never seen it--only heard it. I bought the album 15 years ago and was dumbfounded by her version of Joe Tex's funk classic I GOTCHA. It is one of the craziest covers I've ever heard. Liza and funk mix like oil and water (as those who witnessed her insane cover of Mary J. Blige's FAMILY AFFAIR at her latest Gest-era show would attest), but the number, with it's gutsy 1970's horn stabs, is BIG. HUGE! You know it's brassy when the drags add the number to their repetoire. Lypsinka has borrowed the minutes-long intro (during which Liza must have changed costumes while her dancers Fosse-ized the stage), and Edie lipsynchs to the full song. I can't wait to see the whole, restored special! Here's an article from New York mag which gives some background on the new release. I was asked by M.A.C. cosmetics to be there for a phot-op with Miss Minelli herself, but I'm kicking myself with jazzy spazzy high kicks cuz I'm confirmed for a DIFFA benefit that same night. Terrific!

Suddenly Liza
On Minnelli's 60th birthday, an unearthed film reminds us what made her a star.

By Liesl Schillinger
New York Magazine

You may think you know what bootylicious means, but after you see a young woman shimmying and shaking across a stage this month (if you cop a ticket to the benefit premiere on March 13 at the Ziegfeld) or next month (if you catch her on Showtime starting April 1), you will want to revise your definition. A rubber-limbed 26-year-old hottie in a flame-red micro-mini halter-necked dress bumps and struts, keeping time with two mustached, sideburned men in sunglasses, black shiny boots, ruffled shirts, and black cowboy hats. She punctuates her molten progress with little pelvic jounces as she sings and sometimes howls, "Come on, give it to me--waaah!" The song is Joe Tex's seventies hit "I Gotcha," and the woman is . . . Liza Minnelli, as pulsingly aglow as a neon sign, preserved and digitally remastered at her apotheosis--before three more husbands (at the time, she was separated from her first, Peter Allen, who died of AIDS in 1992), three decades, three knee surgeries, two hip replacements, various addictions, and a case of viral encephalitis had the chance to dim her current.

The spectacular, humorously raunchy number is one of a dozen songs in the one-night production Liza With a "Z," which was, according to Minnelli, the first filmed concert ever broadcast on network television. "It's hipper than anything today," she says. "Fosse made things so funny-sexy."

NEWYORKMETRO