From: owner-lucy-list-digest@smoe.org (lucy-list-digest) To: lucy-list-digest@smoe.org Subject: lucy-list-digest V5 #135 Reply-To: lucy-list@smoe.org Sender: owner-lucy-list-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-lucy-list-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk lucy-list-digest Tuesday, July 1 2003 Volume 05 : Number 135 In this issue: [lucy-list] Lucy in Bridgeport 6/29 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 23:57:30 -0400 From: "Benay Bubar" Subject: [lucy-list] Lucy in Bridgeport 6/29 Well...I have a show review and I also have a tangential thing I could discuss, and usually I tend to torture everyone by putting the tangential stuff first, but time is short tonight so I think I'd better get around to the show review and leave the tangential part for later! So, Bridgeport... The venue was the Acoustic Cafe, one of the smallest venues I've seen Lucy play in...maybe 75 people, I'm bad at these estimates, but in any case it's one of those cozy places with photos and stickers and drawings on the walls and with many cavelike qualities. Even the backdrop of the small stage has wild solar-system-type artwork---it's a neat place to see live music, and a particularly neat place to see Lucy solo. After an earnest but forgettable opener (Jim Something---unfortunately, I've forgotten even his full name), Lucy came out in a gray T-shirt with a white design and black jeans. For the vastly enthusiastic audience (if the place wasn't sold out, it was nearly so), she launched into an unusually free-flowing set list, explaining that she felt like doing songs she wasn't sick of! Yes, there were some expected standards and there were the new ones, but beyond that, Lucy actively welcomed requests and managed to get around to most of the songs people asked for (though unfortunately not More Than This). The set list: Speaking with the Angel Written on the Back of His Hand I Had Something Broken Things (request) Don't Mind Me Here Comes the Sun (two verses, by request, in honor of its being the first non-rainy weekend in recent memory---OK, I'll admit that idea was cooked up by Gerry and me, and even though we knew she'd sung it before on occasion, we were awfully impressed that she actually did it! Pretty good audience singalong action, too.) The Thread Promised Land Ten Year Night (request, though she would have done that one anyway) By Way of Sorrow (request) The Thief (followed by the story of little Ayesha in the U.K. who loves the song) This Is Home (request) Willie (on keyboard) Land of the Living Song About Pi (in honor of there having been a math article in the NY Times that morning mentioning the place where her father works...to my delight, she shared his mnemonic for memorizing pi that I posted here some time back, and I found that it was still serving me well in that I could still recite pi in my head as far and as fast as Lucy could! I couldn't tell if anybody else in the audience liked the mnemonic as much as I did, but I was still very happy to hear her tell it live onstage.) Guinevere (request) Encores, both by request: If You Could See (on keyboard...wonderful!...thanks to a well-timed shout from Donna from way in the back!) My Name Joe (The PERFECT encore set as far as I was concerned...it just doesn't get much better than that!) There were a few problems with the volume of the guitar, but they didn't detract from the show---Lucy was in excellent voice and seemed cheerful and relaxed. She was surprised when, after she said she couldn't remember when she'd been at the Acoustic Cafe last, someone shouted the exact date---prompting cries of "stalker!" from the audience---but the person who knew was Donna, whose wedding anniversary had coincided with Lucy's last performance there and who naturally remembered! Lucy talked about how she had just made the new album over the past 10 days and it would be out sometime in February or March...she couldn't tell us more about the album itself, but she said that the thing about spending 10 days in a room with several guys making an album was that the guys kept telling incredibly dirty jokes. Of course she couldn't actually TELL us the dirty jokes, much as we begged and swore we wouldn't mind...but after some hesitation ("I never tell jokes---I can never REMEMBER them!") she did manage to tell us a short, non-dirty ethnic joke, complete with accents---she still worried that it would offend the audience, but I think I was a decent test case since I could probably have been offended in a couple of different ways and I still thought it was quite funny! (I am not going to tell it on-list because, well, it's a JOKE, and some of you will be seeing Lucy other places and she might decide to tell it again, and my unilaterally spoiling the punchline for everyone here without giving anybody a choice would be almost as bad as my saying "The person who dies in the new Harry Potter book is..."---no, really, I'm not going to do THAT, either, even though someone at work today actually DID do that very thing and caused great consternation!) Anyway, near the end, apropos of nearly nothing, Lucy told us she'd been working out with WEIGHTS and now that she could wear summer clothes, she had to show us something---"I'm told this is a bicep. I've never had one before!" Moment of suspense... then the bicep exhibition. We were appropriately awed. It was a magnificent show, well worth the hours of travel. (Many thanks to Gerry, without whom my trip would have probably still been possible, but not nearly so pleasant...and to Donna who, along with Gerry, makes truly excellent requests!) Benay ------------------------------ End of lucy-list-digest V5 #135 ******************************* This has been a posting from the Lucy Kaplansky mail list digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe lucy-list-digest" in the body of the message