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Jane Siberry concert
Nov. 21st, 2001 02:05 amWho else could make a song she recorded for Barney's Great Adventure be the heart of her concert? All night she was dissatisfied with her performance, or I imagine with the audience -- but it was her job as entertainer, she said, to take our energy and focus it and send it back out, and she hoped we were getting our money's worth. That about money was a joke, she said -- really she meant the two hours of our lives we were never getting back. Nor she neither. Now, I was not displeased with the songs she had sung, but it was true it was all a little sedate, or removed. She was alone on the stage.
She suggested we might sing along to "The Valley", but nobody did. Honestly, I imagine we were all telling ourselves, can you remember the melody line to "The Valley"? It's all gliding accidentals if not quarter-tones.
But "All the Pretty Ponies" is a children's song, and it has a nice simple chorus. We could sing that. And she broke into a smile so fierce she couldn't keep singing, and she made up a patter verse about how she was on the way to New York, and stopped one night in Pittsburgh, and nothing was going right, until everybody buoyed her up. And we all sang another round of the chorus.
She is so direct. She makes it clear that it's not a musician on the stage, it's a person; she makes me wonder and count back how long it's been since I've last seen so clearly.
I remember the first sequence of songs: opening, beautifully, with "The Beginning of Time", then "Journey", "Across the Water", "The Narrow Bridge", and "The Lobby" (from The Walking! I wonder if I'll ever hear "The Walking" itself live). Then I stopped trying to keep track, but I remember she played a great deal of Bound by the Beauty -- the title track, and "Dog", and "Wagon", and there was an extended version of "Hockey" with interpolated backstory about the hockey players. "Sweet Pumpkinhead" and "Oh My My"; I like the Maria songs better solo than in the album version (cluttered, I think). I remember "You Don't Need", such a powerful song. And the one from the Zazou album. ("Hector Zazou is a French avant-garde composer who likes women and red wine", she said, "and I'll tell you a story about that, later", but she never got to that.)
This being a Siberry concert (not-a-concert), there was a question-and-answer session. Some about her late dog Wolfgang. Someone asked if she had been inspired by Joni Mitchell, and it seemed at first as if she was going to be offended. She explained then how she once listened to a great deal of J.M., until she decided that it was no longer the time for her to be influenced by her, so she stopped "cold turkey". And sometimes felt jealous of people listening to new J.M. albums. But recently she had sung two J.M. songs for a tribute album -- and here she sang the first bars of them and figured out the guitar parts.
After a couple of times you get to recognize the people who come to Siberry concerts in Pittsburgh. There's the woman who is always drunk and always calls out for "It Can't Rain All The Time". There is the gay couple, friendly guys, who drive up from Virginia and are hyperenthusiastic and eager to find amusement in every thing she says even when it's not meant to be funny at all. There's the middle-aged couple that drinks Coors Light nonstop. This time the place was laid out with chairs around small tables, so an eat/drink/socialize space instead of a sit/listen space, which I don't think encourages people to be in proper concertgoing mode.
I love the way she bends notes so they ring off your expectations and send shivers through you.
Doing small things with great care is the closest feeling I know to love and safety.
She suggested we might sing along to "The Valley", but nobody did. Honestly, I imagine we were all telling ourselves, can you remember the melody line to "The Valley"? It's all gliding accidentals if not quarter-tones.
But "All the Pretty Ponies" is a children's song, and it has a nice simple chorus. We could sing that. And she broke into a smile so fierce she couldn't keep singing, and she made up a patter verse about how she was on the way to New York, and stopped one night in Pittsburgh, and nothing was going right, until everybody buoyed her up. And we all sang another round of the chorus.
She is so direct. She makes it clear that it's not a musician on the stage, it's a person; she makes me wonder and count back how long it's been since I've last seen so clearly.
I remember the first sequence of songs: opening, beautifully, with "The Beginning of Time", then "Journey", "Across the Water", "The Narrow Bridge", and "The Lobby" (from The Walking! I wonder if I'll ever hear "The Walking" itself live). Then I stopped trying to keep track, but I remember she played a great deal of Bound by the Beauty -- the title track, and "Dog", and "Wagon", and there was an extended version of "Hockey" with interpolated backstory about the hockey players. "Sweet Pumpkinhead" and "Oh My My"; I like the Maria songs better solo than in the album version (cluttered, I think). I remember "You Don't Need", such a powerful song. And the one from the Zazou album. ("Hector Zazou is a French avant-garde composer who likes women and red wine", she said, "and I'll tell you a story about that, later", but she never got to that.)
This being a Siberry concert (not-a-concert), there was a question-and-answer session. Some about her late dog Wolfgang. Someone asked if she had been inspired by Joni Mitchell, and it seemed at first as if she was going to be offended. She explained then how she once listened to a great deal of J.M., until she decided that it was no longer the time for her to be influenced by her, so she stopped "cold turkey". And sometimes felt jealous of people listening to new J.M. albums. But recently she had sung two J.M. songs for a tribute album -- and here she sang the first bars of them and figured out the guitar parts.
After a couple of times you get to recognize the people who come to Siberry concerts in Pittsburgh. There's the woman who is always drunk and always calls out for "It Can't Rain All The Time". There is the gay couple, friendly guys, who drive up from Virginia and are hyperenthusiastic and eager to find amusement in every thing she says even when it's not meant to be funny at all. There's the middle-aged couple that drinks Coors Light nonstop. This time the place was laid out with chairs around small tables, so an eat/drink/socialize space instead of a sit/listen space, which I don't think encourages people to be in proper concertgoing mode.
I love the way she bends notes so they ring off your expectations and send shivers through you.
Doing small things with great care is the closest feeling I know to love and safety.
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