Voices on the Verge @ Somerville Theater 11/20/99
hullo all
a fat & juicy review for you.
everyone was a fashion plate. lots of interesting cutouts in the back and spaghetti straps galore. like a classier spice girls, minus the kicks. maybe this quartet'll inject some necessary glamour into folk music and we can shake the birken-dork stigma. folk is fly. the ladies were in full Diva form, cool and collected, never aloof; perhaps sunday clothes do make the lady. any photos out there? lots of people were flashing cameras.
the music was so good it made my skin crawl. i haven't seen jess or heard her new material in a year or so and i was wowed. she's grown a lot. she said she's flying to nashville soon to record a cd for rkykodisc! she added a clarinet to the mix... it's spooky and complements rose's stuff really well. erin's drum (and that odd box she bangs on) definitely gets a lot going. what is it about jess' voice that sounds so familiar, like some old country singer? lotsa fingersnaps, those little "ping" things that go on your fingers, a tambourine; the rhythm section was well-covered. it was Sweet Honey on the Verge during "Ocean". the a capella harmony felt like '30s radio at times, especially during the jazzy "blackbirds" and "moses".
setlist:
1 "seven" (rose)
2 "louise's great escape" (beth)
3 "little white dove" (jess)
4 "four and 20 blackbirds" (erin)
5 "jesus loves me like a bird" (rose)
6 "independence day"(?) (beth)
7 "softly moses" (elaine's title) (erin)
8 "the air you breathe" (jess)
9 "you don't know" (rose)
10 "tainted love" (beth on lead)
11 "good in bed"(?) (erin)
12 "the wading pool" (jess)
13 "the mud" (rose)
14 "long island sound" (beth)
15 "the ocean" (beth)
16 "not alone" (?) (jess)
17 "Omen" (w/clarinet) (rose)
18 ("that was great/those voices/i love when they scream!")/"Fast As I Can" (everyone/erin)
19 "what kind of lover am i" (?) (erin)
20 "i'll be alright" (jess)
21 "billie jean" (by the gloved one; including dance steps and the opening acts)apparently our ms. p has grown so *big* she's acquired a "galileo" contingent. at a quiet inter-song moment, several pubes in front banded to shout "olga's birthday". (!!) i won't be Cranky in case those "big fans" read this, but she sings olga at every solo show i've seen and it felt disrespectful to the other artists in the ensemble. Calling out "Tainted Love" like someone did last time (and their rehearsed version this time with everyone was rad) when *asked* for requests, cool, fool, but it felt cheesy.
erin made fun of them, and rose's response was classy: "this song is right *after* olga's birthday on the record. if it makes you feel better, i'll just say, "i love marianna.""
that was the only moment where the audience was less than well behaved (very quiet, awesome response between songs, no excessive whooping). the whole she*bang (heh) was three and a half hours plus intermission, yet almost everyone stayed till the bitter end (11:30). our devotion was rewarded with a sung riff on our enthusiasm (#18).
i have a nice bootleg if anyone wants.
Rose Polenzani @ Molly's Pub, Wellesley, MA 9/25/99
wellesley was sweet! i like molly's a lot. it was kinda like a ski lodge getting in there and very laid back. maybe 14 people when we got there, about 30-40 by the time rose was on. *not* stuffy and wholesome.
still basking in the afterglow of a superb show. rose played for 2 hours at least, and confessed she had no idea how long she'd been up there, and she just didn't want it to end. "i'll play till they kick me out". it was honestly the best show i've ever seen her do (this is #5), and it really was as moving an experience as anything i've seen in a long time (maybe since patti smith?). i had no sense of time. i also have amazing recall about the show, despite a number of imbibed substances; molly's is, among other wonderful things, a very inexpensive bar! $1.50 a bottle--hell, yeah! i think i've found the right ratio of controlled substances for optimal concert viewing, but i shan't bore you with the equation.
soundcheck was parhelion. she opened with 1234567, and she made up a lot of the words on the spot, cuz she was taping it to learn it later. next up was "you don't know", when she said her voice was tired and she needed to build up to the rougher stuff. she was particularly soft spoken but the audience was marvelous and in awe.
a lot of the lyrics were improvised, as was the setlist, which i didn't write down. we got a smattering of all things rose: a michael jackson cover ("you got a friend in me"), about his love for a rat; daisy chain (pooka); olga; ramon; in the middle, heaven release us (including a spoken riff in the middle about the things we the audience must be wishing release from: "homework, your Schedule, your pants..." she was trying to think of something she needed to be released from, but said she was too happy to want release from anything. KISSes and PIECEs--sweet); ABILENE!; buzz: the bee song with chris parsley, with many lovely animalian sound effects; sacramento avenue (sigh); she sang MUD for us, because mo asked softly and i asked loudly, and kind of directed it our way, which was sweet; she said "oh you just want to sing along on the chorus, don't you!" :) Monster (yay!); a Bob Dylan cover (help me, someone)--it was amazing, she tore into it, was tuning and it came to her, something about a girl in nyc who blows bob's mind--i keep thinking gemstones had something to do with it; Mercy.
we heard the feng shui/lizard story. what an odd tale to tell in front of your parents. i was pleased. my love corner is comprised of dirty clothes, a radiator, and perhaps 20 scattered cd cases. mo's corner: the back door, a mirror, and her dirty laundry. does that say something significant? discuss.
some advice from rose for those learning guitar: write something in the tempo of a song you really like, and just change the chords and the words; the song was inspired by a James song, which name i can't remember, and the song was unfamiliar too. maybe she's told this story before and it rings a bell for you.
parking ticket (not as raucous as i had been led to believe, but brilliant and ironic and really FUNNY; at least, her delivery last night was amusing). "pull over!" i don't know who you are; we're all strangers when we're in our cars. (how jack handey). very dreamy. i totally relate to the story. when is rose's birthday, btw? it felt so pisces.
other various people and incidents made the night more than spectacular. i didn't recognize anyone at the show. left of center, second row of tables, 4 people; did you see us? were you afraid?
***
review composed by:
h and mo
I've been far less diligent with this little page than I should have been, seeing as concerts are my mostest favoritest way to divert myself from the dreary tedium of being at university. but really, i'm such a lazy ass when it comes to chronicling my own experiences, that I rarely write a concert review these days, even when it blows my mind. Perhaps I'm just getting jaded. I've edited the reviews below recently, but they haven't lost the sense of sophomoric enthusiasm for the "wicked good" shows I went to. And they were amazing and changed my life in gasps and stutters. But the review of the SK show is really more symptomatic of my attitude these days. Getting old at 21 really bites ass.
Sleater Kinney at the Middle East. 6.1.99.
the middle east basement has a low ceiling, poor visibilit, and enough ac power to cool at the most, a small cat carrier. it was misery. this suffering was coupled with a preponderence of males who looked like sex offenders or jocks and women who treated the room like it was privileged to have their presence. no one moved for 75% of the songs, which behavior was alternated with a grudging jerk of the upper torso. ugliness. i prefer the out-and-out flailing of ecstatic limbs to that.
there were patches of people there for the music and not for the "scene", but it was so damn hot i couldn't even contemplate gyrating my way through that sweaty mass of writhing bodies to dance with them...if i had even had the energy to dance with them. i feel old.
of course the girls were great, despite the apparent lack of audience enthusiasm. they bounced around the stage and sang their hearts out. but they weren't good enough to transport me beyond the irritation.
janet is an awesome fucking drummer. she's astonishing, i've never seen anyone move their hands so fast. what a girl. she must have good musklls. ;-P girl drummers are so inspiring. when i saw melissa from the Butchies play... omigosh, there aren't the words. my first encounter with a female drummer was Simone from the (old verion of) Lift... I overcame my fear of performers to gush at length and incoherently of how much her performance in particular moved me. her look bore something of the way complete strangers are charmed by talkative children who accost them in public places. at least it wasn't fear. i bought some cheap bongos last week and i'm having fun banging along to bonfire madigan.
corin has a big glittery pink guitar. ever since i saw the photo of carrie in a cowboy hat on the latest album, i noticed she DOES have this cowboy swagger thing going. they're all so little somehow! but they look strong and fierce and all that guitar work has made their arms incredibly strong looking. yay for black velvet tank tops!
the end.
Rose Polenzani. Club Passim, Cambridge, MA. 2.11.99
excellent show. she was suffering from flu and energy deprivation, so it was rather a subdued evening, but that woman possesses an inner stash of charm that would make listening to tech manuals sound intensely appealing, even erotic. her singing's tactile, it makes shapes in the air. she said she filled out a grant application, and as her mission statement, she put "to explore female desire in all its forms". interesting mission there, hmm, wonder if i can credits for that at bu?
i don't do setlists, but she started off with a song which i guess is called 1234567 or maybe it's "old friends". anyway, it was hypnotic. then i think it was "the chalice" which she dedicated to an elizabeth in the audience with a birthday with modifications "lose the chalice for me in the tangles of your short blonde hair." hee.
continuing the sex and desire theme, was a really old song that she said made her mom finally ask her if she were gay, despite having written several gender-explicit numbers--called "Monster". i liked it a lot; mo didn't. we both liked a new (?) one called "soft parts" ("my friends tell me love is hard/so i hang onto the soft parts"). nice d.e., rosita. if there's a female-identified love song, that's the one. i mean, sys is so phallic, no? not that it isn't appealing. and that bass line is wonderfully, hmmm, groping for something, yeah?
she did a really haunting ramon, which is a song i normally hate with a passion but didn't mind as much in that groove she was putting out. she really drew out the line "our boy was hard and small and split upon the garden wall" and made it sound even more gruesome than usual. she was exhausted by mid-show so everything she sung was more breathy than usual. not that that's a bad thing. ;)
the real clincher to the evening for both of us was one of our favorite songs (god, i make us sound like a couple ferchrist'ssakes), damn i can't remember the name. it's on the ep tape...argh...not thom II, not olga, the one that starts "man in the pasture that my love loved" and talks about her heart molting, and collecting the feathers to make wings for our baby, etc. (i pity the non-rose fan reading this), oh yeah, OMEN! well anyway, it's really my favorite heart-render of hers', and she prefaced it saying, "this song was inspired by reading cuban literature, and this author called reynaldo [something], who had a lot of sex with animals when he was young." as if THAT sheds light on that freaking confusing number. now i'm thinking of some pervy latino dude with barnyard friends, shall we say, instead of lost love and falling stars. ew! that really sucks. t.m.i., as cher would say.
it's ORIGINAL CONTENT!!!!!! (typically, it's damn messy.) some reviews of shows I attended in my inaugural year as a concert slut, 1997. Six IG concerts and numerous others, including Patti Smith, Dar Williams, Kaia, Patty Larkin, Lift, Michelle Malone, and Lilithfair.indigo girls. lowell, ma. 10.26.97.
it was a good show. a GOOD show. i think they saw me dancing (4th row emily) but that's just my need for love talkin'. i've been called a "dancing machine" as a result. this may not be a good thing.
caroline aiken was good in a real familiar folk style way--she kinda reminded me of carole king, but a lot better (is that damning with faint praise?). but did she start early or something? i really got into her last few songs, despite getting distracted by the hometown crowd. she's easy on the ears. i'd like to hear more! Emily said that Caroline had known them since they were "sixteen years old with a driver's license" and "degenerates in a back alley" or something to that effect. they looked happy to share the stage with her--a lot of love up there.
i can't remember any kind of order to the setlist--i know they did three hits, kid fears (the girls swapped looks of wonder listening to the crowd sing the third harmony. Even if we were kind of soft, and they said several times we listened really well), Scooter Boys, Shame On You, It's Alright, Watershed (which NO ONE around me wanted to dance to--argh!), Get Out the Map, which does make one crave orange juice for some reason. All I could think of was juice the resta the show (but not really). um, Love Will Come to You, some old stuff. eek! Chickenman. Tangled Up in Blue. The ubiquitous Closer to Fine and Galileo. Three Hits with some great drumming by Jerry--he was in fine form last night.
Cut It Out was the best performance i have ever seen. amy wailed--she was beating on that well-loved black guitar so hard i thought she'd fall down in pain. and my god! she had a look on her face like she was crawling thru hell. never seen her or anyone for that matter get so worked up for so long. she slammed then was doing hip movements and moaning her "hey my my rockstar" lines and hurting every second of it. it was--wow. and emily was just jamming along next to her cool as a cucumber but supportive just standing there. my mouth had about hit the floor. talk about catharsis. i think i was spent for the rest of the show. then e segues with hardly a beat into "love will come to you" and hell if that didn't illustrate the differences between the girls. that sweet clear--dolce--voice of Emily's and so soothing--i think as the song progressed Amy really calmed down and her voice just returned to loveliness with "wishing i'm fine..even though i'm not this time". So lovely to see.
what were those hand gestures she had going all night? she started on SOY and kept at it all night as if to emphasize certain lines.
chickenman was REALLY well done--i think amy's really perfected the note sequence (sorry if that isn't a technical term) for the opening lines--esp. "defending". wow--i love what she does to those three syllables. no Stream of Consciousness this time but emily REALLY JAMMED on that one--and dave ellison was wicked on the harmonica--i think he went on so long amy was like "enough!" and launched into her verse about mr. buzzard to turn him off. :) no broken strings that i could see.
and who cares what the girls wore when you've got the lovely sara lee--i think amy introduced her as "incomparable" and said something about her fashion sense. she had her great woods outfit on--green turtleneck and plaid pants but these rocking fuschia (fake) alligator skin shoes with clunky heels. i called her a goddess and she laughed at me. a crowd of us listers hung out after the show to see if we could get autographs. e took off before any of us knew it in the back of a black sedan--didn't even wave or nothing but after waiting around forEVAH amy came out, waved, said she had a long ride and she was tired and headed in the bus. but get this--she had YELLOW SWEATPANTS on--and was just the cutest little slumber party kid--was that a Notre Dame sweatshirt? what a snugglebunny. someone gave a security guard a lovely bunch of coconuts--er roses---which got back there and we were VERY tempted to pass him "Just a Schmeer", our baigl bootleg of ig cover songs. wonder if they would have listened? ;) should i try this at new haven? liz? bueller? BLACKMAIL! we were all just standing around jerry marotta, who was signing autographs.
indigo girls. new haven, ct. 10.28.97
it was a great show! i can still be excited after oh 18 hours awake so it musta been sumfin special. let me just say ROMEO AND JULIET! THIRD ROW DEAD CENTER man. the girls have REALLY pulled their songs into something close to mastery. i thought they were good in the summer, spring, but now fall's here i'm once again mouth agape and heart pounding.
caroline aiken has REALLY grown on me--i liked her okay sunday but she was wowsers tonight! i gotta get myself a pair of leather pants like that. ;) i LUV that "all wet" song she does about the gay men she saw in the Space Needle--aw i probably botched that story but you know what i mean. she's just the coolest lady--signing cds (too bad i was already broke) and chewing the fat and she took notes from everybody and promised she'd hand-deliver them to the girls. very smiley--her and fran were kvetching about how they could be our mothers. there were about eight people hanging out with her for a while after the show just hoping the girls would come by and chatting with her.
galileo! weird to open with that. maybe it's just me. but the girls looked happy to take the stage and you shoulda seen Emily smiling at Fran Egan (who's the Bestest Indigo Den Mother in case you haven't met her) dancing and shaking her sweet mama self there. we drew a lot of attention cause we were so shameless in our abandon and our dancing machine moves. can i just say what a thrill it is to catch emily's eye? (even at 2 am that sounds odd) and have i mentioned lately i'm in love with sara lee? she was so adorable tonight. black or dark purple leather pants on and those decadent fuschia alligator shoes, and a plain white t-shirt. anyway, she might have remembered me from sunday, or maybe she just got a kick out of someone dancing to chickenman that crazy but she grinned at me for a good while.
anyway i'm digressing
shame on you--fun summertime song, lots more dancing of course. was it just me or was this a really diverse crowd? yuppie couples, yalies, gay couples, nymphette lesbians, baigls? amy's got the cutest thing going with her hands in this song, especially the beautiful ladies part--no eyes rollin' but she kinda shakes her head from side to side and waves her hands in the air.
Three Hits--jerry and sara just blew us away tonight. palace theater has GREAT acoustics and those opening bass chords were just vibrating through my shoes. excellent. in the bridge, amy just went nuts thrashing her guitar.
scooter boys--the end bit "i am the bane [i swear it's not "to blame" this time] and so are you...." during the hey blue blood you're nothing new part where she howls, amy hurled her pick away, grabbed the microphone with both hands and started wailing into the mike. then quick as a lick she grabs a pick off the stand and works the guitar again. emily had her phenomonal guitar solo again.
gotm--orange juice! more dancing. the girls were both having the time of their lives--smiling and really just enjoying the crowd. it was a good crowd too, real enthusiastic--people actually were shouting "you go girl!" during some of the jams.
powderfinger--a said they'd seen a movie about him today--i think it must be "crazy horse" which is out in boston. e was just really starting to jam when a chucked it and tore into Tried to Be True. i love what they do with that number. it's just a rowdy fun-to-play number like land of canaan and they're so obviously having fun that it's great just to watch them.
leeds is REALLY getting good. when i heard it at UNH emily was really straining and grating (dearly tho i love her) but either her vocal nodes are better or her range has REALLY increased b/c she was just wonderful, powerful and thrilling. and the audience was singing so pretty behind me it was truly beautiful. what a nice crowd.
Don't Give That Girl A Gun!!! can i just say how much i've missed hearing about this song lately? i'm so glad she sang it tonite. her intensity did not equal what she was going thru with Cut It Out sunday but damn if she isn't the sexiest singer around. anyway, the lyrics have changed somewhat (or they were tonight): at the end:
"well hold me closer cause something's happenin'
well, i just can't get it together
she said i doubt you ever will, ever will again.
i said don't..."
then at the end she just went off on this absolutely breathtaking song, all by herself, the crowd was just awestruck, dumbstruck, amystruck silent for it; emily was fingerpicking softly on the side:
"don't give that girl a gun, etc.
give that back
give it back
i say give it back
give it back baby
give that back..."
etc.
real soft and sorrowful and pleading like. there was a communal hush of inward drawn breath. it was a moment.i'm getting tired and i know there are lots of things i'm forgetting.
everything in its own time--so very lovely. emily is so much fun to watch perform. she doesn't steal scenes like amy but she has so much integrity and honesty in her music it's just a cool drink of water to watch her. the lighting at this show was great, and for most of this song, amy was bathed in indigo light and emily in red. it was gorgeous.
CHICKENMAN has got a new SOC going. what i remember goes something like: "all the carnage of our journeys
makes it harder to be giving"
and also something about sleeping on a mountaintop at night with the stars over head and wading at dawn in the bitter river, then
"he asked me, "are you lonely?"
and i said, "yes i've been so lonely, so lonely"
he asked me, "are you happy?"
and i said, "yes i've been happy!!!!"
i REALLY want to try & transcript this one--it's no trillium soc for sure, but it is delivered just right. dave was again fabulous on the harmonica.
and for those of you who made it to the end of this:
the scoop on the ctf girl--she first got their attention (a lot of it--they kept looking over and amy had to look away at one point with this goofy grin on her face while e kept right on smiling at them) when she and her girlfriend stood body to body hugging and dancing the ENTIRE SONG. it was cool tho, b/c it's a love song you know? then later in the show she shouted up she wanted to be the third indigo girl, and the first black one! and the girls were just eating it up so they invited her up for CTF. she was so good too it made that song so much fun all over again--a-dancin' and a-singin' she put a lot of vitality onto the stage. she was actually really good! so it wasn't obnoxious or anything, i know people were concerned it would get tired after a while.
patti smith, 12.2.97, as posted to igboston:
okay, folkies, ;) i don't know how many of you are into that angry rock goddess thing (ferrick barred ;), but if you at all have any passion for the kind of music that makes the floor shake then go see patti smith tonight. and if you don't want to go for her, then go for Lenny Kaye, who was absolutely fucking fabulous on the guitar. this tiny scrawny 50something woman was backed by two young guyz and lenny and a monster of a drum kit, yet she had more noise in her hundred pounds than all three of them put together.
honestly, it was a night totally unconnected with linear time, hearing that icon of the 60s and 70s jamming and trancing and exuding this incredible and kinda scary aura. i thought all the people like her were dead. as lynda put it, it couldn't get any better unless janis joplin had arisen from the grave and was up there too. smith is SCARY looking, but i swear i have never heard anyone in my life ROCK with such force. i have this metallica streak and i love angry aggressive music, but i have never seen or heard anything like what went down last night. and seeing a *woman* perform that way was one of the more enlightening moments of my concert life (i think i've been to one too many folk shows). i can't believe there are people like her still out there (or is she the only one like that?) i mean, she's whacked out mentally, has done too many drugs, and gives people the evil eye, but if that doesn't scare you the intensity will. you forget to breathe.
maybe i've made this sound *really* unappealing.... maybe i get too into my music or maybe there was just too much pot and cigar smoke and alcohol fumes down in that skanky rat-like lupo's for this innocent chick, but it truly was a religious experience. ya feel all squiffy inside. it's nice!
lynda has my undying gratitude.
back from whence you came
last update: 9/27/99