Sunday, September 07, 2003

(this post was actually written late at night a few days ago, but blogger keeps going down when i try to post it.)

god i've been totally neglecting my blog this week.... my eyes are falling out right now, but i really wanted to post about the tori/bed show. on monday we woke up early, picked up elise, and drove to atlanta. we made it in less than 7 hours, when we had been anticipating 8. we ate at chick-fil-a and played spot-the-tori-fan. we got to the show relatively early, which was nice because parking was incredibly difficult. the show was in an outdoor amphitheatre in the middle of this park. we had pretty good seats -- they were the best ones left when dad ordered them. elise and morgan got shirts right as we entered, and dad got the new ben folds EP. he's doing this thing where he just releases a bunch of EPs in a row instead of albums, which i think is really really stupid because i loathe EPs. i think whoever invented EPs is an idiot asshole. why the fuck would i want to buy an EP which is the equivalent of less than half an album, or contains a few songs already on an LP plus a couple obscure tracks that the band didn't like enough to put on the real record. what the fuck. who wants to waste money on that shit. so fuck ben folds' EP idea, because i think it's shit. i wouldn't buy 5 damn ben folds EPs when i could just buy 2 albums. and anyway i wouldn't buy his albums in the first place, so there's no issue here. anyway. elise got a green ben folds shirt that says "rock this bitch" and morgan got the tori amos lottapianos tour shirt, which is very cute. after i show i got the "crazy" tori shirt, which is nice but i actually saw somebody with a shirt i would've liked better. i should've checked out the other booth. ah well. ANYWAY. so once we found our seats and got settled in we barely had to wait at all before ben folds came out, very unceremoniously. i liked his nonchalance about the whole thing he seemed very geek, which i like as well. but he was also a total performer -- he managed to have a rockstar stance, even sitting/standing at the piano bench. something i'm still trying to figure out whehter i liked or not: he was solo, so it was just him and the piano obviously. sometimes he'd try to get the audience to sing the horn parts or something on the songs, and teach them to us before the song and then sort of try to cue us in when the time came. it was fun and all, i guess, but i hate that it was an imitation of hte studio versions of the songs. if he wanted saxophone, why didn't he bring along his saxophonist friends? the more i think about it the more it bugs me. the crowd was obviously NOT there for ben folds... there was a lot of chitchat during his set, and through the whole thing people were still coming in and out. it really bugged me that people were being so disrespectful, and elise kept saying "I HATE THIS CROWD!" when people weren't incredibly enthusiastic about singing the horn bits, or hearing certain songs or something. i thought that was very silly. what can you expect from a crowd wanting to see tori amos? i don't think that a lot of tori fans are big ben folds fans, and for a lot of people those are two very different kinds of music. ben folds is, in a lot of ways, totally opposite from tori. as stated, he's a total geeky little performer guy and he stood on the piano and tried to make us sing along and all that. his lyrics are nice, but very opposite from tori's style (and i'm sorry, i absolutely love her lyrics). same with his piano skillz. he played for about an hour, and it was nice, but i really don't like him any more than i did before the show.... which isn't all that much. i, like most of the kids there, know a few ben folds songs but am not that greatly intruiged by them. he's a whiny white guy, what else is there to say? elise said that his set was very good, and i trust her because she knew every song he played. i can't find a list of the songs right now, but they should put one up at this site soon. anyway. bravo, ben folds. you were a funny kid.
we didn't have to wait long at all before tori came onstage. before she entered, there was a ‘voiceover' kinda deal of "wampum prayer" before the band came in. they started to play before tori flittered out onto the stage wearing ... well she looked like a little flame from where we were. she was in orange and yellow...? i remember how it looked in my head, but i can't translate it into real colors, oddly enough. she opened with "a sorta fairytale" which seemed so very obvious, but i didn't really mind. she played a LOT from scarlet's walk. in the past when i've seen bands/artists promoting their new album, they don't tend to play THAT much material from it. in fact, she didn't play anything from choirgirl... it was like when ani played nothing from not a pretty girl when i saw her at new daisy. oh well, it was okay. unlike with the ani situation, choirgirl is NOT my favorite album, by far. the set was really good, though as i said, a little too much scarlet for me. i wish i could've seen her a few years ago... oh well, too bad for me. i wish i was older. i won't go into it right now because then i'd just get depressed about missing the entire riot grrrl movement. ohhhh. anyway. the way they were set up, tori had one main piano and she could turn around on the bench(?) and play another piano, or a keyboard. sometimes she played two different ones at once, and it was quite awesome. there were times when just the band would be playing and she sort of supported herself on the two pianos, with her back to the audience... like i've read, a tori show is a very magical experience. i loved hearing different versions of familiar songs -- she played some classic solo ones with the band, and some classic band ones solo, so change is good. the lighting was very high-tech, also. i really love lighting at shows, because i think that even if it's cheap as shit, it can be really powerful. no lighting is nice too, but you know what i mean. it's just so very *rockstar* and i love that kind of thing. i'd love to do lights for a muisican. or be a roadie. or be in a fucking band. where is my damn band? somebody come over and bring any sick excuse for an instrument that you have got. anyway i guess it would be really sickening for me to go through the whole set list, when you can read it here. elise knew about 7 songs, i think, not counting the covers -- "i'm on fire" by bruce springsteen, "nights in white satin" by the moody blues, and an improv break into "feel the earth move" by carole king, in the middle of tori's song "take to the sky." i think elise would've at least recognized some more songs if she'd been listening to the albums we played in the car all the way to atlanta, but that's not my problem. the last song of the set was "precious things" which was amazing of course. that's a really intense song, and as it turns out, even more so live, what with tori grabbing her crotch and singing/playing a lot more fiercely than the album version. i think on the first few listens to that song, it's really easy to miss the anger, which is such the driving force for the song. oh and also during "father lucifer" (SO glad she played that!) she gave the finger to the "girls who eat pizza and never gain weight" which i loved, because it's a great line, even though it made me feel silly for being skinny. hahaa oh well. she left the stage briefly, and of course returned shortly, with two songs for an encore. first she played "god" which also felt a little obvious. she also fucked up one of the lines, which was amusing, and later in the song, instead of "god, sometimes you just don't come through," sang "tori, sometimes you just don't come through, girl." that was amusing. then she played "mary" and left the stage again. i'm very glad she came back for a second encore, because i think "mary" would've been a very disappointing close for hte evening. she came back and played an uber-long version of "space dog" featuring the andromeda improv opener, which made me REALLY happy. i'd sort of vibed for her to play that all night. that and "doughtnut song" which she played directly after. and right after THAT, as the final song, she played "your cloud" (which is the song that reprsents Memphis on teh scarlet's walk album) so i think i was just sending subliminal messages to tori through that end bit. it was a sweet little close. all in all, she'd only played one song i didn't know -- a b-side called "tombigbee" which i quite enjoyed. 8/24 songs from scarlet which has been my least favorite album, actually, but maybe i'll appreciate it more after having heard/seen some of it live. i have much better appreciation for the song "nights in white satin" now that i have heard tori's version. well okay. maybe not appreciation. but tori can make anything sound sincere, genuine, and beautiful (instead of the world's cheesiest piece of shit song ever). i was SO glad that she played "bells for her," also, because i'd really been in the mood for that one in the car on the way to atlanta earlier that day. also the way she ennunciates "blaaaan-ket" in the live version is so lovely. oh tori i hardly knew ye. why did you go and leave me? she played only 3 songs from pele which really is my favorite album, i think, even thoguh all the critics say it is the most "challenging" and "difficult" one. they like to generalize it because it's the one that was made after tori broke up with an important boyfriend, the way that they generalize jagged little pill into being so intensely angry. fucking critics. i'd be the best critic ever. not really, because my reviews would end up being exactly like this. i like that tori's b-sides are just as important as her album tracks. most of them are b-sides because they didn't want to be on the albums, according to tori. she played 4 of those, and i was proud to know 3 of them. the tori audience is, as i have discovered, NOT a dancing one. maybe it was just the venue or something, but we remained in our seats the whole time. i would've liked to stand for part of the time, maybe, but i would've been blocking the view for kids behind me and i didn't want to be rude. maybe we were just in the wrong part of the crowd, or something. but the dancing mostly consisted of rocking back and forth in one's seat. the amphitheatre sported 2 huge-screen TVs on either side of the stage, and they had quite a few nice close-ups of tori looking incredibly elfish and beautiful. i really enjoyed her solo set (3 songs) in the middle of the show, but i thought the band was great fun to watch. the bassist sometimes played this crazy thing that looked like a tiny upright bass.... no idea what that was. and sometimes the drummer played with mallets, rather than sticks. he also could play the bongos with one hand and the maracas with the other, which probably isn't that great, but impressed the hell out of me.
the show was amazing, and i'm so glad we went. it was really strange getting in the car afterwards, where we'd actually been listening to "father lucifer" on boys for pele and sort of thinking "wow this voice was just a human flame on that stage." or maybe it was just really late and i was tired. we stopped at some gas station to eat food and change into our uniforms before falling asleep on the long trip back to memphis. and at school, i wasn't even that tired. imagine that.

listening to: tori amos - the doughnut song
(dear god, go download this song. okay at least read the lyrics. it's amazing.)

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