from cavtat@yahoo.com

Here's my review of the May 26th show in Detroit. We drove down from Windsor to see what was the last chain of bands I wanted to see before I die. The show started at 7:30, general admission, so people were lined up for the longest time just to try and get to the front and hopefully cling on to the rail and hang on for dear life. My sister's boyfriend managed to smuggle in a camera after a close call with a pat down by the front door security, it paid off in the end.

Hole opened with Violet, strong and fierce. Awful was loud and by far the best song of the night. But as far as stage stuff goes, Courtney was telling Melissa what to say when greeting the audience which was kinda cute. Later on she sang Madonna's Express Yourself and Holiday, with the help of the audience. Courtney hung onto a statue (part of the theatre) when she sang I think it was heavan tonight.

Overall the mood was festive, it was too bad that she never swung into the old days with the 20 song set list. On that note I don't even think Eric could have survived playing that long because he looked like he didn't know what planet he was on. He had this dead face expression the whole concert. Maybe that's just the way he is when he plays but from what we saw, he looked just out of it.

About the camera, we got some awesome pics but we almost lost the camera to a fuckin psycho security guard that lunged into the crowd after my friend. And if he's reading this, "nice try buddy, how did it feel to be denied, and fuck you!". We'll send that one to you when you get fired for not doing your job and the picture ends up on an Italian bootleg, ha ha!

There was a big crowd outsdie trying to get a glimpse of the band. We saw a bit of them but that was about it. T shirts were a rip off. And my friend talked to Samantha after, she said the band looks forward to getting out to Saskatoon and playing Edgefest. Please email me back when you get this message, thanks.

Here's the set list, sorta in order:

Violet
Awful
Miss World
Reasons to be Beautiful
Malibu
Dying
**Express Yourself
**Holiday (Melissa singing duets)
Use Once and Destroy
Doll Parts
Heaven Tonight
--------------------------encore

Northern Star
Celebrity Skin

Review by Jenn Vit (pjaic@globalbiz.net)

i went and saw hole on wednesday and OHMYGOD IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!! melissa was beautiful (well they all were, but y'know). i was right in front of eric's setup getting slammed from behind by 2,000 other fans. they started off with violet and it was so cool cause the lights were all off and it was just courtney singing the opening lines, and then the lights went on and everyone started playing. court was wearing this shimmery dress and had angel wings on, melissa had on a white tanktop that said "I *HEART* MOTOWN" and a black miniskirt. i don't really remember what eric or sam were wearing. they played violet, miss world, and doll parts from ltt, celebrity skin, awful, malibu, reasons to be beautiful (which sounded kind of strange without jordon *sob*), an incredible version of northern star, boys on the radio (some dumbshit thought it was called boys on the bed and would not shut up about it), ummm i don't remember anymore right offhand. i know they did a b-side, but it wasn't one that i really recognized. also, they played part of madonna's express yourself and another cover song that i don't remember. during one of the songs, courtney climbed off the stage and onto this higher landing that had a statue on it, and she just stood there looking over the crowd singing, while everyone around the statue tried to climb on other peoples heads to get ahold of courtney. the stage people eventually pulled her back down and court started picking people to go sit on stage behind her, mel, and eric.

Review from Newspaper (thanks to Jenn)

HOLE DIVA LOOKS FOR THE LIGHT IN HER LIFE

Courtney Love, raw-voiced rocker, and Courtney Love, in-your-face actress, are flip sides of the same coin.

Both annoy one second and titillate you the next and both seem to be making it all up as they go along. As she once sang in "Miss World": "I fake it so real I am beyond fake."

Yet even Love can't bluff her growing disgust for the world of rock 'n' roll.

"In acting, you get treated with a great deal of humanity and good manners," she says, speaking by phone from Cincinnato before the first show of Hole's tour. "People show you their best side, their honor, their character. But when I go back to the ghetto (of rock 'n' roll), people treat other people with absolute disdain. All these rock people are working-class. They all come from white trash...with the occasional me thrown in and they just think it's really neat if someone pats them on the head and says, 'Here's a Rolex, kid.' It's made me more of a diva because I refuse to allow myself to be treated shabbily as a human being...which is why the Manson thing is such a travesty."

"The Manson thing" was Hole's recent ill-fated arena tour opening for shock-rocker Marilyn Manson. On paper, it was a double-bill made in heaven - two rabble-rousing pariahs for the price of one. But in reality, it was a train wreck: Ticket sales ranged from poor to dismal; the two stars traded insults onstage and some of Manson's fans greeted Love with open hatred. After nine shows, she quit the tour.

She says she was bullied into touring with Manson: "And it was self-betrayal, because I knew better," she says. "I'm never going to reach a white male who's 18 years old and has raging testosterone. He's going to look at me like I'm - I don't know - Lita Ford: 'She's prettier than I thought and she kind of rocks.' But he's really not going to hear me."

And while the singer stands behind Manson's right to do and say whatever he wants, she says the macabre side of his show freaked her out.

"People on our crew were crying when they watched this band, because it's so disturbing," she says. "My response was, 'It's all camp. It's a big joke.' But then I watched a little of it and thought 'Wow - this is wrong.' Why willingly be a part of creating that kind of dark energy?

"Unfortunately for me, I've been involved with that energy that's really, really dark that I wasn't trying to create and all of a sudden, years later, I'm allowing myself to be being a part of that. It was very regressive and ridiculous and it was wrong."

Love never explains this "dark energy" - she talks so fast it's hard to get her to stop and elaborate - but the 33-year-old California native hasn't exactly lived a charmed life.

After a childhood filled with custody battles and reform schools, she worked as a stripper before forming Hole in 1990 and marrying Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain two years later. Suffering from depression and heroin addiction, Cobain killed himself in 1994 0 an event that haunts many of the lyrics on Hole's third and latest album, Celebrity Skin ("So sick in his body, so sick in his soul," she sings about him in "Reasons to be Beautiful").

But Cobain wasn't the only drug casualty in Love's life. Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff died of a heroin overdose two months after Cobain's death and the singer recently fired drummer Patty Schemel because of her drug addiction (the new drummer is 21-year-old Samantha Maloney).

"You can't be the drummer and have problems like that," she says, referring to Schemel. "For God's sake, it's 1999, not 1991. Can we move on? I have a lot of empathy for people who can't, but that doesn't mean I have to be around that. I really, really, really hope she gets better and I really hope I don't get that damn phone call, because I hate that phone call."

It wasn't that long ago people were bracing themselves for bad news about Love, who had her own publicized bouts with heroin.

"I found glamour in it at a certain point, but there is no glamour in it. It's gross. It doesn't fit. It doesn't work. It's over. Done. Did it. Over. Not even a struggle."

She chalks up her recovery not to a 12-step program but to her role as doomed, addicted Althea Flynt in "People vs. Larry Flynt."

"I don't know how I got so lucky, to be honest with you, but I think I was able to really express the darkest part of it through this other person," she says. "Capturing her experience on film like that sealed the coffin on that. It's over now. It doesn't exist."

- Thor Christensen, Detroit Free Press