From: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org (jinglejangle-digest) To: jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Subject: jinglejangle-digest V6 #57 Reply-To: jinglejangle@smoe.org Sender: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk jinglejangle-digest Tuesday, October 28 2003 Volume 06 : Number 057 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [MLL] Mary Lou in WaPo [Steve Garrison ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 22:53:00 -0500 From: Steve Garrison Subject: [MLL] Mary Lou in WaPo The following is the Washington Post's review of Mary Lou's raw and emotional show at Iota Club and Cafi in Arlington, VA last Thursday evening: > Many people who knew Mary Lou Lord knew that she championed the work of fellow > musician Elliott Smith, who died Tuesday. So when Lord took the stage at Iota > on Thursday night, more than an hour late for a 45-minute set, clad in a black > parka and apologizing, she needed no further explanation than "I've had a > really [rough] couple of days." > > Lord's vulnerable, willfully unvirtuoso style both masked and mirrored her > pain. On the best of nights, her soft voice and busker-style guitar strumming > serve to draw her listeners ever closer, more charmed than amazed. She had > backup this time, a four-piece band she claimed she had known for only an > hour. And after a couple of achingly lovely solo acoustic numbers, she brought > out the group for a suite of energetic covers of songs by Bevis Frond's Nick > Saloman. Saloman's "Stars Burn Out" and Paul Thorn's "You're a Long Way From > Tupelo" set up a subtheme of the music industry's loss of innocence. Lord > played tough-tender throughout, her voice sometimes rising to confront anyone > who'd think she's just another girl singer. > > After dismissing the band -- "I think I'll keep 'em!" -- Lord began a verse of > "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go." She stopped just before the word > "go," apologized and said she couldn't go on. She turned instead to a ballad, > "My Own Worst Enemy," for what she claimed was her last song. But then she > bravely vowed, "One more," and, with a halting start and only a brief whisper > of "I can't do it," soldiered through a reading of the deeply lonely "Half > Right," co-written by Smith. In its way -- in Lord's way -- it was perfect. > > -- Pamela Murray Winters http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14614-2003Oct24.html I spoke to Mary Lou the next day in the store where I work, as she was hitting the salad bar for lunch. Her [rough] day (the actual word was 'shitty') apparently included not only the emotional upheaval of E. Smith's death, but losing her cellphone and a whole range of large and small scale mishaps and indignities, including driving off with her coffee still on the roof of her car (OK, who hasn't done that?) She referred to the show repeatedly as a 'train wreck,' and although I acknowledged that it undoubtedly wasn't the show she would have preferred to give, I insist that it sounded better to us than it felt to her (although I can't express that anywhere near as eloquently as my friend Pam, in the above review). I hope Mary Lou gets to read it. Steve ------------------------------ End of jinglejangle-digest V6 #57 *********************************