Pride festivities in downtown Minneapolis two weekends ago were off the hook as usual, but thanks to Kesha, another big, rainbow-tinted festival took place Saturday night at a rather unusual place, Mystic Lake Casino Hotel.
The Los Angeles pop-rock singer/songwriter played up her messages of inclusivity and self-love to a beautifully diverse, largely under-30 crowd of about 10,000 fans outside the casino and hotel complex in Prior Lake. This wasn't your buffet-angling grandmother's kind of casino concert.
Part of her ongoing Rainbow Tour — which just wrapped a month of dates with Macklemore — Kesha's show was the first date in Mystic Lake's summer "amphitheater" series. Unlike competitor Treasure Island's newly cemented venue, Mystic's outdoor concert space is still just a grassy field without any permanent infrastructure and with much poorer concession stands. You'd think a casino would know that extra-long beer lines are a good way to lose easy money.
At least it didn't rain on Kesha's parade-like performance, during which she changed outfits once for every three or four songs and proved all the more Cher-like with her deadpan humor and queenly attitude.
"My natural habitat is in a cape," she told the crowd, donning a spangly white wrap for the disco-y "Boogie Feet" following her rocky, F-bomb-laced opener "Woman."
Before her chant-filled third song "We R Who We R," the 31-year-old ringleader mentioned June's pride events like a party guest who wants the bash to keep going all night.
"I think every day of the year is Pride," she said to cheers, "but technically it's the last day of the month, so we should go extra hard. Pride is never over."
How colorful and prideful did Saturday's show get? Just before the encore, Kesha noticed a rather conspicuously shaped, gold-painted papier-mache object coming toward the stage from the audience for her to autograph.
