From: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org (jinglejangle-digest) To: jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Subject: jinglejangle-digest V3 #87 Reply-To: jinglejangle@smoe.org Sender: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk jinglejangle-digest Sunday, July 9 2000 Volume 03 : Number 087 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [MLL] mary lou @ club passim - a review, sort of ["Carsten Wohlfeld" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2000 12:44:25 +0200 From: "Carsten Wohlfeld" Subject: [MLL] mary lou @ club passim - a review, sort of Mary Lou Lord Club Passim, Cambridge, MA 7/7/00 No, I wasn't even there. But I wish I would've had the chance to be there. Because judging from the webcast of the show (gotta love modern technology!) alone, it was probably the best show I've never seen. I've seen Mary Lou a number of times and had the chance to listen to a number of shows on tape as well and for the most part I was every impressed. Interestingly enough, Mary Lou always told me that the shows I'd been to weren't that good at all. I didn't believe her. Now I know what she meant - last night at Club Passim Mary Lou's performance wasn't just very good, it was simply staggering. Amazing. Sublime. You get the picture. I thought the show was very much different to the ones I'd seen or heard before. Usually she seemed to talk a lot more and by doing so, seemed to concentrate on the "entertainment" part more than on the songs. Tonight it was the songs and not much else. Maybe this was due to the tour she's done with Shawn Colvin recently. It obviously makes a difference if it's a one-off chance to get out, meet people, play your songs, and get your message across or if you're on a tour, playing (almost) night after night. She came on stage at around 8.30 local time (which was 2.30 my time, right after some "Frasier" re-runs), after being falsely introduced as "Tracy" by the club's manager (!) and opened with a sublime rendition "Please Be With Me" from "Real", as song that seems to make a comeback recently. As always she asked for requests and when somebody shouted out for "Sugar Sugar" of all things, she replied "oh no, where did you hear THAT?". She did all her usual songs like "I Don't Want To Get Over You" by The Magnetic Fields, Richard Thompson's "Beeswing" (which, funnily enough, Thompson didn't play at his recent Cologne show, "because it's too hard to play"!), "Aim Low" and "He'd Be A Diamond" by The Bevis Frond and "Western Union Desperate". The way she pronounced "Biscayne Bay" during that song was worth the admission alone, I thought. Sweet. But there were many surprises, too. Apart from talking about her experiences supporting Shawn she also played *tons* of songs, she usually doesn't seem to do very often. There was The Pogues' "Sayonara", complete with the unlikely "the motherfucker kissed the ground" line, a simply amazing rendition of "Two Boats", one of my favorite Mary Lou songs and one she never plays when i'm in attendance... Even though she wasn't sure if she could remember all the words to the song - she hadn't played it in a long time - it confirmed that Mary Lou is not only a great live performer, but a major talent as a songwriter, too. Halfway through this very intense show she also confirmed that she's working on a new album at last and that The Green Pajamas' instant classic "She's Still Bewitching Me" will feature on the record - in a grungy band-version, as she put it. The show was pretty good already, but it was the many surprises Mary Lou pulled out during the second part of the show that really made the night. "Onatrio, Quebec And Me" was beautiful as always, The Bevis Frond's "Book" was a nice and she did a very good job on "On The Avenue" as well. She dedicated "Hey Antoinette" to her sister ("her hair is even more ridiculous than mine") and then proceeded to play a *killer* version of "Thunder Road", even though someone in the audience actually had requested "Born To Run"! She did "Thunder Road" the last time she played Passim last December as well, but this version was about ten times better and one of the best Mary Lou performances I've ever heard. Somebody should release this rendition as a single or something! Could it get any better? Yes. She did Big Star's "Thirteen" right after "Thunder Road" and after a little promotion campaign for Eva Cassidy she even did "St. Swithin's Day" which sounded a lot better than the recorded version on "Real" and would've made Billy Bragg very proud without a doubt. Then came a song I didn't realise at first. Well, I knew I had a version of the song somewhere, but I was actually so surprised that Mary Lou played it, that it took me a couple of hours to make the connection. The song in question was "Don't Tear Me Up" by english singer/songwriter Michael Philipp Jagger and features on his 1992 album "Wandering Spritit". Great song and Mary Lou played a very good version, too. My spy tells me that the writer of the song is also in a little known band from London, England, called The Rolling Stones. Check them out if you get the chance. Mary Lou also started "Subway", but decided against playing it after a few bars, because she didn't "want to think about the fucking subway, this [the club] is much better", as she put it. She did "Seven Sisters" instead, not my favorite song, but at least it was rare. And just as I was finally convinced that it couldn't get any better she closed the show, which lasted well over 90 minutes, with "Ricochet In Time" by Shawn Colvin. Wow! It was the kind of show that makes me want to move to Boston - yes, it really was THAT good. Thank you, Mary Lou and I hope you'll make it over to Europe once the new album is done! For a complete setlist, please go to http://carstenwohlfeld.de/mll/2000shows.html cheers, carsten - -- http://carstenwohlfeld.de "join the working class school of expressionism! kick a ball or play a guitar! a hungry man makes a better fighter!" (ed ball) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2000 08:09:04 -0700 (PDT) From: Stefan Bloom Subject: [MLL] Don't Tear Me Up Man, I remember seeing Mary Lou upstairs at the Middle East in like 1994, and her playing this song (this was before I really knew who she was, too), and just being blown away that anyone else besides me even LIKED the damn song, and then blown away again by the staggering version she did of it. I haven't seen her play it since, so it's thrilling that she's playing it again these days. The song's actually written by Jagger and Jimmy Rip, who was the guitarist on that record. -Stefan __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get Yahoo! Mail – Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ End of jinglejangle-digest V3 #87 *********************************