From: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org (precious-things-digest) To: precious-things-digest@smoe.org Subject: precious-things-digest V10 #160 Reply-To: precious-things@smoe.org Sender: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org 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 Friday, August 26 2005 Volume 10 : Number 160 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Cool on Bawlmer's island [handal@r2d2.reverse.net (Richard Handal)] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 14:33:58 -0400 (EDT) From: handal@r2d2.reverse.net (Richard Handal) Subject: Cool on Bawlmer's island Hi, All: Just waking up from having attended last night's concert in Baltimore at the Pier Six Pavilion. I'm glad I had given a ride to a friend, because I had lots of energy to share after this one. A while back my number of Tori Amos concerts surpassed the 150 mark, and this absolutely was one of the top half dozen of them overall. Lights were doused at 8:59 and the concert was over at 10:56, the main set having ended at 10:32. The Peabody Institute being a mile or so up the hill provided a springboard for nostalgia, some of which came out as quickly as the introductory organ section of the evening's second song, Crucify, in which Tori extemporized something about "I used to walk these streets" in a segment that lasted several lines. During Marianne, randomly in the middle, she extemporized "I'm starting to hear things/ I'm starting to see things in the shadows . . ." and indeed, the second song during the piano bar portion of this concert was one she said she had remembered hearing on the radio during her times in Baltimore rather than its having been anyone's request for this concert; and this opening line of Superstar in itself captured a great deal of the sensibilities of the evening: "Long ago, and oh so far away. . . ." How brilliant it was for her to take a song that deals with both memory and hearing a song on the radio and to turn it back onto itself by performing it due to the inspiration of having remembered *it* on the radio many years earlier in an area that had been a big part of her life. Recontextualizing art changes its meaning, and this served as a fine demonstration of that. Lots of family were there: Dr. and Mrs. Amos, sister, members of the niece/nephew contingent, and friends who are close like family. This clearly was as much or more a springboard for the emotional tenor of the evening as was the physical location itself. This concert had great emotional depth, much of it rooted in the purely personal, such as when she sang Winter while looking over frequently to her father, but it never got mired in the maudlin, and there was a sense of playfulness and acceptance that life does go on after even the tragic personal losses of those who are close. In this vein I especially enjoyed the humor of her performing Cool On Your Island while evening breezes drifted through this tent pavilion performance space, as the venue is located on a tiny island or at the least a narrow peninsula onto which one comes aboard via a wooden walkway much like the gangplank of a ship. I love when art brings itself to its own consciousness by turning self-referential, so long as it doesn't dwell there and thus become self-obsessed, remaining rather a nod and a wink. I hope it will be possible one day for me to hear a recording of this concert. One reason being that she was doing at least one thing musically that I don't recall hearing her do before (other than perhaps in Charlotte on the day before her 1996 birthday), which was the way she interwove what seemed to be three discrete voices on the piano as part of the introduction to a song, but again I must apologize for not making note of it and forgetting which song that had been. The way she dealt with turning Superstar into a pure ballad from what was originally interpreted by the Carpenters as an introspective pop song--cue the oboe obbligato--was brilliant: the manner in which she adjusted rhythm between verse and chorus and back again is something I'm interested to further investigate. As it approached in the song I wondered what she would do to cope with it yet remain true to her vision of the song, and it was the sort of great solution to such challenges to which some of us have come to expect her to rise. Tori has come to seem rather comfortable contorting herself to play both piano and organ at the same time, and I might be wrong about this, but it seems that it isn't always anything she'd worked out in advance. Some songs are begun on organ, she swings around to continue on piano, then swings back to the organ or halfway 'round to straddle the bench and play both at once. Once last night as she did this it was clear she had become a pretzel, and she meekly smiled out into the audience as if to say, "Yeah, this is kinda nuts, but the music is being served by it." I definitely found myself understanding that the way she was playing different parts ("parts" as in "each separate voice or line of music in a composition") of a song on both instruments was as if they were parts for different sections of an ensemble, and I have to think this may serve to lead her in the direction of more fully arranged works of a type which would differ in nature from how she has typically worked thus far with band members in which they are left to more or less come up with their own parts--the doubtable Mac Aladdin notwithstanding. If so, then Mark's Christmas gift of an organ a couple years ago will have helped her make the pivot to a new method and direction. Good deal, I say. As I was wandering around inside the Ten Thousand Villages store in Fells Point before coming to the venue I noticed many cabasas--gourds wrapped in nets laced with stylized beads of a type which are percussion instruments common in many cultures around the world--and I thought about the wonderful KMTT Seattle radio interview Tori did this year on 22 April in which she talked about how Sweet the Sting came into being. She described how they were "having one of those great evenings where all the musicians and the engineers were; you know, you have nice food and margaritas and Natashya was at a princess party, and all of a sudden the cabasa was going, and, uh, I just had the best ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay- ay-yea-ah, ti-ti-time . . ." as she began with the left hand, leaving the impression that this cabasa was what had given the rhythm to the song. (I think this tells us where the lyric "shake me sane" came from, too.) Funny stuff. Anyway, I wasn't surprised when Sweet the Sting showed up last night. I don't see her ever playing a better version than she did that time on the radio show, though. A major wow. Ending the concert last night with 1000 Oceans on both organ and piano was gorgeous and highly appropriate in every way. Before wrapping up these comments I will note that I attended the Camden concert over the weekend, and the improv she did last night during the opening section of Crucify on the organ (and its being played as the second song of the evening) mirrored exactly what was done at that concert, each with an improv appropriate to that particular concert's sensibilities, so this seems to be a repeating theme on this tour. These were my only two planned concerts over the summer and I've not gone back over setlists to determine how often this opportunity has been presented, let alone taken advantage of, but it's something I noticed having attended these two concerts. I also found myself wondering if I had started out walking toward Cleveland this morning I could arrive in time for Tuesday's concert. Combined with hitchhiking, perhaps. I maintain that there are layers of meaning in these tours which can reveal themselves only when having experienced longer portions of them together, and while this is beautiful, it's a shame that more of the folks who might reap the rewards of attending at least sections of the tours are unable to. Travel can be taxing in many ways and I well understand this, but if there's anyone who was considering going out on a musical road trip, I want to encourage that. If it's anything you think might bring about rewards great enough to have made it worth the effort and expense, here is someone who also believes this to be true. Be seeing you, Richard Handal, H.G. ------------------------------ End of precious-things-digest V10 #160 **************************************