Tribute Show - Bee Gees Gold Tribute

Bee Gees stay alive through tribute band

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Brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb sold more than 220 million records and won five Grammy Awards as the Bee Gees. Their music lives on with John Acosta, who portrays Barry Gibb in Bee Gees Gold: The Tribute, which comes to Genesee Theatre Sept. 28.

Acosta promised the audience will “feel the fever.

“I want everybody to close their eyes and when they’re hearing their favorites songs, exclaim out loud, ‘I just heard the Bee Gees,’” said Acosta, whose falsetto voice closely mirrors that of Barry Gibb’s.

“We do dress in the 1970s fashions. And we bring back these arrangements, these songs from the Bee Gees catalog that are one-of-a kind,” he said.

Then came the disco era in the 1970s when Barry Gibb reinvented the group using his famous falsetto. “No one sounded like him,” Acosta said.

Acosta said he was 10 years old during the disco era, which brought the Bee Gees song “Stayin’ Alive” to the top of the pop charts.

“Whatever you’re listening to when you’re 10 years old, you start to imitate,” he said. “I was imitating Barry Gibb at parties.”

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I AM KING - The Michael Jackson Experience

‘I Am King’ salutes Michael Jackson’s career

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Michael Firestone admitted when he learned Michael Jackson died in 2009, he no longer wanted to continue doing his tribute performances of the King of Pop.

But within months, Firestone was back on the road again, acting like, singing like and dancing like one of the most popular entertainers of all time, something he’d done for years before Jackson died.

Firestone will perform in “I Am King: The Michael Jackson Experience” Sept. 20 at the Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet and Sept. 21 at the Genesee Theatre in Waukegan.

“It is way better than anything I’ve ever done,” Firestone said of the production. “Everybody on stage is a piece of the puzzle, the band, the dancers. It isn’t just me. It’s the whole package. The crowd really gets into a super crazy state, like a trance almost.”

Firestone, who has been portraying Michael Jackson on stage since he was 12 years old, recalled the day Jackson died — as well as conversations he’s had via the Internet with Jackson over the years.

When Jackson died, Firestone said he was in bed and awakened by many phone calls from news channels, friends and family.

“I hate to sound dramatic, but I knew,” Firestone said. “There was this feeling in the air. I knew he had passed. I didn’t cry for two days, but when I did, it just didn’t stop. And I said, ‘I’m done. I’m not going to do this anymore.’ I quit for about a month, and then all these wannabe really terrible impersonators came out overnight, and I said ‘I want input into this.’ I went full throttle. I put all my other music on the back burner. I just loved Michael Jackson and I wanted to do it right.”

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