From: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org (believers-digest) To: believers-digest@smoe.org Subject: believers-digest V3 #235 Reply-To: believers@smoe.org Sender: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk believers-digest Monday, November 8 1999 Volume 03 : Number 235 In Today's believer's digest: ----------------- SUSAN @ Circle of Friends - Franklin MA - Saturday Nov 6th ["Murphy, Stev] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 01:10:43 -0500 From: "Murphy, Steve" Subject: SUSAN @ Circle of Friends - Franklin MA - Saturday Nov 6th AS REVIEWERS HAVE WARNED BEFORE ME.... "WARNING - LENGTHY REVIEW ONLY FOR SERIOUS SUSAN FANS".... Caught Susan on Sat Nov 6th at the Circle of Friends in Franklin MA! I must say --- This was an AMAZING SUSAN EXPERIENCE. I will attempt to deliver a review here to the best of my abilities using classic Cara style! There were up to 12 Believers that I could see; Gail, Pat, Shibey, Katie (a "newbie" - not new to Susan, but first live experience) Paul Kim (& 3 friends, some believers, forgot names - so sorry... Paul brought some enormous instrument with him), Lori of NH, Rick (Poor Rick's Almanac) & my wife Karen and I. The "pinned" believers were awarded their Susan Posters. Jane was vacationing in Key West, and although Steve "Jane in Waiting" filled in quite nicely, I must say I missed seeing Jane. Hope you are enjoying and/or enjoyed the vacation Jane! Jake, the guy who brings all this great talent to Franklin, was having quite a night of his own! He was funnier than he normally is (Jake - did you know you were funny? Well now you do). ALRIGHT! Enough with the Attendees & Staff... on with the PERFORMERS! Let me first say something about the "warm up" act - Colleen Sexton. Boy, did she warm us up! Someone chimed in here a few weeks ago singing (no pun intended) the praises of Colleen. He or she was not mistaken whatsoever! How often to you see a warmup act get an Encore request? Even though we were all very eager to bring on Susan, we didn't want to see Colleen go just yet! She came back and seemed genuinely touched by the gesture, and played a wonderful "folky" rendition of "I will Survive" that was amazing! She was so wonderful!! Can't you tell by all these exclamation points?!!!!!!! Please check her out sometime if you can! After a short break to allow a handful of people to find vacant seats in the full house (the venue equivalent of defrag), Susan came out and started with; LOVE DOWN THE STREET She started chatting with the audience... "what about that Colleen Sexton?" (applause) "I will survive. She'll make that a hit someday!" Then she started in on the bad points of going back to standard time. Which lead into; PETALUMA AFTRERNOONS I love the scat she goes into at the end of this where she includes "Where They're always smiling (repeat repeat) Even if the bottom dropped out of the market, they'd still be smiling"... At which time she declared that she should move on to the less positive "Optimists Live Longer, but Pessimists see the world more clearly"...; GOT TO SEE THE BODY You might ask "Why is she so Pessimistic?" Maybe it's her growing up experiences; THE YEAR OF THE BAD PRESIDENT "I love to come to Boston, although I hate the foliage". Then she shared a story of her recent trip to North Dakota where "The foliage was depressing". Then she went into a story of a couple where one (the female) inherited the Shy Gene and the other (the male) inherited the Flirt Gene; GYPSY LIPS/VAGABOND MOUTH She then apologized for all the new songs and hoped that they were not overwhelming, to which an audience member responded that they were just "whelming". She then said she'd do something we're more used to. Now this was really funny... she set up the song (with the guitar vamp (do they call them Vamps in folk?))... then she paused for a good 10 seconds while she tugged and *bit* at her guitar pick on her thumb, then started right in on the lyric of; TIME BETWEEN TRAINS After, she had the audience in stitches with her theatrics; doing impressions of the body language of Richard Thompson, Ricky Martin & Mary Travers. Then she warns (particularly the ladies) of the single occupancy bathrooms and says (If they choose to get a jump on the line) that there are three songs left in the first set and that she's consulting the religious file; SORRY ABOUT JESUS The look of embarrassment that Susan displays while performing this song is so realistic. She would be a very successful actress if she chose to peruse that career. After, she said that she was banking on that being a number 1 Christian Radio Hit, but she thinks that it's "something to do with the beat" that doesn't appeal to them. "My Intention was not to offend anyone with that last song, (but this is not the case with this next one)"; AIN'T I LONELY TONIGHT Then it was ***INTERMISSION***. Here's another place where this venue is unique; There is a bowling alley downstairs. Several of us cut back and did a little bowling. All the Racket brought Susan out. She spent some time with us and watched us bowl (and run up and down the alleys setting up pins and returning balls). Signed our posters, chatted, etc. It was great. I think I threw all gutter balls. This is where I presented Susan with the picture of her holding the "LAST OF THE GOOD STRAIGHT GIRLS" BARBIE. This was a creation of our friend, Michigan Believer, Suzie Tee. I said "Remember this"? Susan remembered, and knew well of the BARBIE discussion that was going on here a few months ago. I informed her that we had the second in the series with us... a "SNOW WHITE" BARBIE. (This required no work on our part, as My Mom gave this to our 3 year old Daughter for her birthday this year... so it came fully assembled for our purposes). We asked Susan if she would pose with Snow White for a picture after the show and she said she'd love to. Finally, before she went back for the second set, she confirmed my suspicions that Suzie Tee looks like Connie Kaldor! I knew it! There's another! (inside story). She started her second set with; IN BRAZIL, I HAD NO SHADOW "And now we go from the Hills of Brazil to the Hills of Austria"; DOW REI ME I think this is the funniest song Susan has ever written an performed. It is perfect. I wish more Americans could see/hear this song. It would have such appeal to everybody! If Susan were to get on one of the big entertainment shows. This is what she should perform! After, she started talking about the possibilities of ever *recording* that song (and probably performing it on live TV - there goes that idea) being quelled by the Rogers & Hammerstein folks for silly legal reasons like "Your product could be confused with ours"... "Ya - Like I'd be cutting in on their action"! She finished the topic by saying "Doesn't that song want to make you go out and rent their movie?"... then performed; LIKE BONSAI ...afterwhich she set up the next number as "one (she) performed in a workshop with Greg Brown on "Vices" ("Greg came well armed"); FALL FROM GRACE Then she went to the Piano for a "Piano set". An audience member shouted "We were wondering what took you so long" which brought on some classic Susan/Audience banter. She played; WHY DO YOU BOTHER AT ALL ...then a song I think I heard her do before, or maybe I was dreaming; (BRING ON THE) BEAUTIFUL CHAINS OF LOVE Then she declared "Alright! Enough with meaning it!"; MOVIE OF MY LIFE When she says "They'd show me going to a thousand stupid movies", she chanted (The Matrix The Matrix The Matrix). Now it was time to go to the short film; MUCH AT ALL Now it was time to go back to Guitar (I was glad she was going back to the guitar because I already felt I had seen a whole concert and I was delighted that there was still more!). She now performed a song that I might just now declare is my FAVORITE SUSAN WERNER SONG and I have only heard it now for the first time. I won't say anything else about it other than it's awesome. I don't know the name, but I am guessing it'd be called; MISERY/HAPPINESS She now announced that she would do one more song and "call it a night". She said something really sweet and touching that made the audience feel touched all over. Assured us she wasn't just "being coy", then delivered an excellent rendition of; BORN A LITTLE LATE Then she went off.... Naturally, we all stood and applauded. None of had any lighters (folk music fans don't smoke!) or we would have been sparking them up! Susan came back saying "Lets try a little experiment". She surprised us all with; ME AND MRS JONES ...inviting us to sing along at certain times. Susan: "What time was that?" Audience: "6:30". At the end, she made a comment about how "Everyone in Town knows.... the Pharmacist Knows.... etc.." A most excellent rendition! Then she finished the night by unplugging, standing right out as close to the audience as she could (and, lucky for us, about 5 feet directly in front of us), and sang a song that she had a lot of requests for. On the first note, my wife gasped. Now, she's pretty conservative with her gasps but let out an enormous one when Susan started performing; LA VIE EN ROSE I would have gasped too, but I was paralyzed! I can't say anything else about it because I'm getting verklempt just remembering what that felt like. We were going to be late for the show if we had dinner before so we put it off 'till after. We stopped at a TGIF half way home our 1 hour drive and didn't get home 'till 1:30. I couldn't sleep! Can it possibly get better than this? HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at songs.com ------------------------------ End of believers-digest V3 #235 ******************************* --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------- This has been a posting from the Susan Werner believers-digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe believers-digest" in the body of the message