From: owner-precious-things-digest To: precious-things-digest@smoe.org Subject: precious-things-digest V1 #79 Reply-To: precious-things@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-precious-things-digest Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "precious-things-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. precious-things-digest Monday, 13 May 1996 Volume 01 : Number 079 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Tori Amos in New Haven, 5/11/96 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: MATH TRIED ERR Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 19:54:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: Tori Amos in New Haven, 5/11/96 Hi! Last night, I had the pleasure of seeing Tori Amos perform two shows at the Palace Theater in New Haven, CT. While the first show was good, **nothing** could have prepared me for just how incredibly, intensely amazing the second show was. (If you don't wanna know, delete this post now. :) Because they had to squeeze two shows into one evening, there was no opening act (and I can't say as I was disappointed). Our seats were in the third row of the balcony, just right of center, and they were great. Set list: Beauty Queen/Horses Crucify Bells for Her (on harpsichord) Cornflake Girl * Father Lucifer * Doughnut Song * Pretty Good Year * Putting The Damage On Happy Phantom Not The Red Baron Caught A Lite Sneeze * (on harpsichord/piano) Mother Me And A Gun Somewhere Over The Rainbow Space Dog * China This Old Man Hey Jupiter * (on pump organ) (* denotes Steve Caton on guitar) I was rather surprised by some of the song selections: it seems as though she's been doing "Crucify" as the second song forever, and to be honest I'd happily hear something else instead. And "Bells For Her" on harpsichord was definitely different. She did a lot of rearranging of it, and I think I need to hear it again before I can form a real opinion of the new version. "Father Lucifer" simply blew me away: she did all three bridges in consecutive order, not layered on top of one another like on the album, interspersed some bits of Mike Oldfield's theme to _The Exorcist_, and ended with the "run away turn away run away turn away run away" bit from Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy" (though that part, like the similarity to "Purple Rain" in "Hey Jupiter" may be officially unintentional). I can't adequately describe just how well all this worked -- just hope she performs it that way when you see her. :) And then she did "Space Dog". What can I say, the song rocks. It was great to have the wacky guitar in the background, too. Steve Caton is an excellent addition, without question: his guitar textures add just enough to the songs while keeping Tori's music firmly in the fore- ground, and he knows her and her music well enough to be able to improvise along with whatever she's doing at the time (though she did manage to do a good job of faking out her light board operator on several occasions ;). It would be wonderful to see her add more musicians to her stage lineup: not a band per se, but a collection of instrumentalists who could come out and add whatever they could when appropriate -- perhaps a percussionist and a violin- ist and/or cellist. Tori's voice, this early on in the tour, is in fine form. She's singing out more than on the record, and she never ceases to amaze me with her sheer vocal power. I hope she can keep it up, though -- that sort of thing can really do damage after a long period of time. The one vocal bit that bugged me was the long, drawn-out "girl" in "Precious Things", which when combined with its associated lighting effect has been brought down to the level of a stunt just to please the screaming high-schoolers who have gone nuts over it on the previous tours. It's obviously contrived, and unnecessary. Why sound like a foghorn when you don't have to? Anyway. I was impressed by the audience: they were very vocal in their appreciation in between songs, and quieted down pretty quickly once the next song began. There were only a few outbursts, ranging from the amusing "Tori, I dreamed I was your cat!" to the most egregious of the entire night, a female shout of "I want you!" during the first line of "Me And A Gun" (Tori managed to silence the resulting angry murmur that swelled through the crowd with a simple motion of her hand, without skipping a beat). Overall, the first show was good, but I was hoping to be more moved by it than I was. Tori seemed a bit down, and didn't talk at all save for a really bizarre preamble to "Bells For Her" that I didn't quite parse, and a quick introduction of "Caton", as she calls him. After it was over, as we made our way outside into the pouring rain to get in line to enter the building again for the second show (I really wish the theater had a more intelligent way of handling that) I found myself worrying that maybe the criticisms I've seen are right, maybe she has lost some of the honesty and intimacy that have made all of her live shows so special to me in the past. I remarked to one of the people I was with that she hadn't really been able to destroy me since she performed "Baker Baker" immediately following "Me And A Gun" at the Symphony Space, NY show at the beginning of the last tour. Gee, maybe I should make comments like that more often. 8) Our seats were down in the orchestra this time, pretty much directly beneath where we'd been earlier in the evening. The crowd was certainly more raucous before the performance began, but as it turns out they were merely getting it out of their system early, thank the gods: they were even more respectful and appreciative than the first audience. Are you ready for this set list? Beauty Queen/Horses Leather Blood Roses (on harpsichord) Little Amsterdam * Cornflake Girl * In The Springtime Of His Voodoo * Doughnut Song * Angie Upside Down Little Earthquakes Precious Things Not The Red Baron Lovesong (on harpsichord) Caught A Lite Sneeze * (harpsichord/piano) Me And A Gun Baker Baker Famous Blue Raincoat Mr. Zebra London Girls Icicle Honey * Song For Eric (on pump organ) I'm getting chills just typing the set list. I don't know what she did or ate or took or whatever in between shows, but a different Tori came out on stage the second time around. She had changed into a blue version of the jumpsuit thing she's wearing in the mattress photos and pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and she was totally into it and having a great time. She took a break from the proceedings to let us all in on a war Sound and Light were having involving 7 little plastic dwarf dolls, reading a ransom note which stated that if Light didn't get 10,000 frozen Snickers bars (king size ;) by 9:15 PM on May 11, "Dopey gets it". At that point two voices from the back of the theater yelled, "Tori! We've got ze dwarves!!!" This totally cracked her up, and she said, "Did you hear that, guys? You've all gotta help Sound out here, 'cause they're fucked" and then launched into "Little Amsterdam". :) She and Caton jammed more on "Cornflake Girl" and especially during "In The Springtime of his Voodoo" (which she introduced by starting the keyboard vamp and declaring, "Girls, mount your bulls!"). I was in shock when I heard the first strains of "Upside Down", when "Little Earthquakes" began to follow it up the shock deepened, and when she turned to her harpsichord and said, "Some of you may know this one -- I used to listen to it really loud while driving down the freeway in L.A." and then launched into a HARPSICHORD VERSION OF THE CURE'S "LOVESONG", I went into another place, convinced the show couldn't get any better. Hah. She had to go and play "Baker Baker" right after "Me And A Gun" again. Then completely blow her studio version of "Famous Blue Raincoat" completely out of the water. She left the stage to the first standing ovation of the evening, and came back with a sly grin on her face to pull "Mr. Zebra" and "London Girls" out of her bag. Caton came back onstage, and people started shouting requests: "Sugar", "Icicle", "Honey", "Professional Widow". Tori thought a moment and said, "Okay, while he's tuning I'll do this" and gave us "Icicle". At that point I thought, Nothing could make this show any more transcendent unless they did "Honey" or something, not noticing that Caton had an acoustic guitar in his hand. "Honey" is my absolute favorite Tori song ever, even now. To hear it with the full musical accompaniment on acoustic guitar was absolute heaven, and reduced me to a quaking mess. When the song was done Tori turned to the pump organ, which her techies had expertly set up in place of the harpsichord behind her in the meantime, obviously ready to do "Hey Jupiter" again. Then she abruptly turned back and shooed Caton off the stage, who, surprised, shrugged and left with a smile and a wave for the enthusiastic audience. She started playing something on the organ that sounded eerily like bagpipes, and when she sang the first line of "Song For Eric" I just lost it. There she was, playing something that she only rarely performed even when she and Eric were together, something I never in a million years would have expected her to ever perform in public again. The first time I saw her perform "Me And A Gun", not 10 feet in front of me at the Iron Horse Music Hall at the beginning of her first tour, wasn't nearly as powerful as that. (I think sometimes it's not necessarily a good thing to know too much about an artist.) Then it was over, yet another long, loud standing ovation and a few minutes to recover before making our way out, surrounded by people in a similar state who couldn't say anything that didn't start with something resembling "wow". I know it would kill her, but god, she should do two shows a night more often. I don't know what it is about New Haven, but all of the shows of hers I've seen there have been something beyond words -- that one in particular. I sincerely believe that show was the best Tori show I have ever seen, period, and I hope as many other people as possible get to have a similar experience as the tour wears on. I have doubts that tomorrow's show in New York can even equal it, never mind surpass it, but hey, she's surprised me once already! :) +===========================================================================+ |Meredith Tarr meth@delphi.com| |Boonton, NJ USA http://remus.rutgers.edu/~woj/meth/| +===========================================================================+ | "nothing's gonna stop me from floating" - Tori Amos | +===========================================================================+ ------------------------------ End of precious-things-digest V1 #79 ************************************