REVIEW: The Moonshine Jungle World Tour: Intimacy in Wide Open Spaces

by Anita Davis (special to Bruno’s Lady Club)

Bruno Mars Moonshine Jungle Tour 640x360The arena darkens; a curtain featuring majestic palms is illuminated with pulsating lights, and a disembodied voice states, “Welcome to the Moonshine…. Jungle!” As blue lights glow, a rhythmic mélange comes to the aural foreground, and then… Bang! The curtain FALLS to an oceanic wave of emotion and cheers. Tens of thousands are about to be possessed deep in the heart of la jungla (the jungle). Bruno Mars and his Hooligans Band are poised to slay relentlessly, without mercy.

 

This is the Moonshine Jungle World Tour (MJWT)/Moonshine Jungle Tour (MJT). From June 22, 2013 to October 14, 2014, a musical juggernaut plows through Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania, leaving audiences ecstatically exhilarated and transformed.

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REVIEW: Bruno Mars Soars in Superbowl Halftime Show 2014

In the beginning…

brunomars-superbowlThe halftime show for Superbowl XLVIII on February 2, 2014 begins as sponsor Pepsi’s familiar red, white and blue logos wink out, one by one to a roaring crowd.

Vocal fanfare resounds, as singing children silhouetted against an American flag animation which is transformed into the word “Prepare”, sing from the Bruno Mars/Travie McCoy collab “Billionaire”:

 

“Every time I close my eyes
I see my name in shining lights
A different city every night oh, I…
I swear… the world better prepare…!”

 

Their linked hands rise, and the lights grow red and sweep forward, as a glimpse of black and white electronic “snow” flashes briefly and bright pyrotechnic flames shoot up from beyond the stage, and we see Bruno Mars at a drum set. His “Whomp & Stomp” (what he calls the pompadour that had been his trademark during his previous tour and album, “Doo-Wops and Hooligans”) adds height to his 5’5″ frame, which has been whittled to sleekness during the rigorous 2013 leg of the “Moonshine Jungle World Tour.”

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