Kenny Rogers, Windsor Hall, BIC (From Dorset Echo)

Kenny Rogers, Windsor Hall, BIC

4:18pm Thursday 10th June 2010 in Music Reviews By Jeremy Miles

Country music legend Kenny Rogers strode onto the BIC stage to wild applause from his adoring audience and then proceeded to throw insults and 10 dollar bills at them in equal measure.

It’s an intriguing party piece but it seems to do the trick. Having told them they couldn’t sing, that the crowd in Paris knew the lyrics better and that swaying backwards and forwards made them look “like a room full of Ray Charleses” they were eating out of his hand.

Rogers act is of course exactly as you would expect – slick, professional, featuring a tip-top seven piece band and packed with hits.

All the favourites were there Lucille, The Gambler, Coward of the County Islands in the Stream, Ruby Don’t Take Your Love to Town and many more.

Perhaps feeling his 71 years Rogers gave us a slide show of his young wife Wanda Miller and their five-year-old twins.

With Wanda – the fifth Mrs Rogers – watching from the side of the stage he also duetted with a hippyish younger version of himself on a psyche-delia-tinged sixties film of his band The First Edition performing Just Dropped In To See What My Condition My Condition is In.

Happily his condition is just fine.