From: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org (precious-things-digest) To: precious-things-digest@smoe.org Subject: precious-things-digest V8 #193 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 Tuesday, August 19 2003 Volume 08 : Number 193 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Personalized Tour Stats Updated up to Toronto, Plus Abbey Road [Brian K T] cleveland plain dealer concert review [broadway jack ] rochester democrat and chronicle concert review [broadway jack ] chart attack concert review [broadway jack ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 22:21:41 -0700 From: Brian K Tanaka Subject: Personalized Tour Stats Updated up to Toronto, Plus Abbey Road Just a quick note to say that I've updated the Personalized Tour Stats gizmo thing to include all the shows up to Toronto. Also, I've finally added Abbey Road to the December 13, 2002 San Diego setlist. Thanks, everyone who nagged me about that. If there are other inaccuracies that I should fix, please feel free to let me know. Not that it's blindingly facinating, but here are my own stats (minus the individual song tallies, of course): Total number of shows attended: 34 Total number of songs performed: 789 Total number of songs, each individual song counted only once: 127 Total number of songs played only one time: 31 Average number of songs per show: 23.21 My mind is officially boggled by the fact that I, though pretty much a newbie, have seen Tori play 127 different songs. Never let it be said that she doesn't have a large repetoire. Theoretically, she's played 191 different songs in concert since '92. That number is not quite precisely correct, but it's close and it's pretty fucking impressive. (Also, that number is based only on the 649 concerts accounted for in the stats gizmo, and doesn't include "non-concert" performances such as radio and television appearances.) Hey! Look at this! I'm not forgetting to include the URL! http://livelists.dyndns.org/sw.stats/ Have fun. - -- - - Brian Tanaka - - LiveLists: http://livelists.dyndns.org - - Thunder Wishes, Fire Thought: http://www.well.com/~btanaka/tori "think of me as a librarian from a different dimension" -- Tori Amos ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 14:05:50 -0400 From: broadway jack Subject: cleveland plain dealer concert review Blackout is partners' inspiration for song 08/18/03 Robert Cherry Special to The Plain Dealer The big blackout was still on everyone's lips Saturday as Tori Amos fans filed into Tower City Amphitheater in downtown Cleveland's Flats. One crafty young woman even sported a homemade "BLAME CANADA" T-shirt, cheekily volleying suspicion away from Ohio and that mysterious nine-second surge that plunged us into human contact. Amos shared her story as well, and in her own inimitable fashion. Early in her set, the ivory-tickling chanteuse revealed that she had waited out the crisis in a Birmingham, Mich., hotel. She then detailed her adventure in song. Apparently Amos and her 3-year-old daughter, Natashya, shared a candlelit lobby with Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and KISS' Gene Simmons, both of whom were also scheduled to rock Detroit the following evening. According to the brief, jaunty number, Amos' daughter liked Tyler because "he sings in nursery rhymes." But Tyler's avowed serial-womanizing co-headliner fared less well: "That man is scarier to the little girls than a blackout," sang Amos, smiling. It was no "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia," but the song established the evening's intimate, impromptu mood, and received generous applause from an audience that most likely had passed on the God Of Thunder's latest farewell tour. Dressed in a flowing powder-blue tunic, faded blue jeans and burgundy Manolo Blahniks, Amos conjured the spirit of performers like the perpetually wind-blown Stevie Nicks, Led Zeppelin's Rhodes-tinkling John Paul Jones and ELP's twin-keyboard-straddling Keith Emerson. Backed by ace session cats Matt Chamberlain and Jon Evans on drums and bass, respectively, Amos toured her deep catalog, mixing early abstract confessionals like "Silent All These Years" with material from her excellent year-old concept album, "Scarlet's Walk." On the new disc's Led Zeppelin-channeling "Pancake," she even slipped in verse from Neil Young's "Ohio," offering a still timely reminder of another dark event from our past. Opener Ben Folds, fully shed of his backing "Five," provided the perfect foil for Amos, blending genuinely funny social satire with poignant ballads like his 1997 hit, "Brick." Especially winning was the recently recorded "They Give No [Expletive Deleted]," in which Folds hilariously vented on America's expanding waistline, terminal self-absorption and imperial over-reach. Cherry is a free-lance writer in Cleveland. To reach Robert Cherry: entertainment@plaind.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 14:10:54 -0400 From: broadway jack Subject: rochester democrat and chronicle concert review Amos, Folds offer piano aplenty By Jeff Spevak Staff Music Critic (August 18, 2003) -- Tori Amos is the Grateful Dead for the Angry Young Woman Screaming To Get Out Of Everyone's Body. Her fans follow like pilot fish snapping up chum in the wake of a shark. A check of ticket sales by promoters of Sunday night's show at Finger Lakes Performing Arts Center revealed purchases made in 20 New York counties and 22 states. But it's not so much a school these days following Amos as it is a Scooby-Doo lunch box. Unable to compete with the corporate weight of the ClearChannel Entertainment-controlled Darien Lake Performing Arts Center, the crowd was a slim 3,000 for the only real pop show of the season at the once-busy venue (Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge doesn't qualify). If Ben Folds hadn.t drawn his own cadre of enthusiasts, Amos could have taken the crowd on a tour of the wine country in her bus. Of course, they make up for that with the ethereal intensity of New Age warlocks. Rather than settling down, Amos appears to be uncovering new belts of intoxicating stratospheric gasses with each passing year. All feathered up in a pink Nora Desmond eveningwear shawl, Amos even has a spunky side: Describing how she.d encountered Kiss and Aerosmith in her hotel lobby, Amos offered a close approximation of Gene Simmons. tongue. Alongside just a bass player and drummer, Amos accompanied her swooping voice with a delicate piano style. Her main keyboard inspiration appears to be rain falling on George Winston. With both electric piano and grand piano at her fingertips, her playing dominated the night, even swiveling between the two on songs such as "Sweet Sangria". Folds performed unadorned: Just his stool, a bench and no band in sight. But with the sun setting over Canandaigua Lake, the lawn dotted with people on blankets and just that grand piano, Folds. music was like cocktail hour for an audience of Young Twenties who recently landed their first real jobs as he opened with "Best Imitation of Myself." Folds is an interesting character of a pianist, his thunderous chords on Liz Phair's "Chopsticks" melting away to the more-traditional version of "Chopsticks". He's often been compared to Elton John, since both appear to write pop music, but John never slammed his forearm down on the keyboard to produce a multi-octave crescendo. That's something that Folds often did with his former rock trio, the Ben Folds Five, but was no less amusing in the solo format. Alternating between standing and sitting at the piano throughout the hourlong set, he delivered a solemn "Brick," a familiar hit spotlighting a teenage abortion, and arranged an audience-participation harmony on "Not the Same". Folds seemed a little nervous, with wandering dialogues between songs. Despite the personal nature of some of his songs, Folds said he never actually had a mullet as described in "Army". It's the style of a guy making his first-time appearance at a comedy open mike. "If you've ever wondered what it's like to be one of those comedians in a tie standing against a brick backdrop," Folds confessed, "it's lonely." But it's not difficult to be charmed by a guy who notes that a recent publishing contract required him to write 4.6 songs, then plays one with a chorus of "3.6 to go." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 14:13:56 -0400 From: broadway jack Subject: traverse city record-eagle article August 15, 2003 Tori Amos concert called off Official says there were just too many 'unresolved issues' INTERLOCHEN - Interlochen Arts Festival has canceled Tuesday's Tori Amos concert. It's the first time in the festival's approximately 20-year history that Interlochen initiated a cancellation of a major show, said Thom Paulson, vice president for radio and presentations. "We have had shows where an agent or artist pulled out at the last minute," Paulson said, "but we've never been in the position where we had to do that." Interlochen found itself in that position with Amos, Paulson said, because there were too many "unresolved backstage issues" that meant it wasn't clear "who was going to do what" to make Tuesday's show come together. "Some artists' contracts are pretty over the top in terms of what they expect in terms of support for the artist, and that's not unusual," Paulson said. "Tori Amos's expectations weren't unusual, but we amended the contract quite a while ago, and we haven't had any conversations since. "There were too many unresolved issues regarding the show and we felt it was the only thing we could do at this point. We've never done anything like this before. It's pretty irregular." More than half of the tickets available for the show had been sold as of Thursday's cancellation announcement. For information on how Interlochen is handling refunds, see today's Entertainment cover. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 20:07:54 -0400 From: broadway jack Subject: chart attack concert review LIVE: Tori Amos with Ben Folds Monday August 18, 2003 @ 05:00 PM By: ChartAttack.com Staff Molson Amphitheatre Toronto, Ontario August 13, 2003 by Heather Kearney Tori Amos runs a tight ship. Ben Folds took the Molson Amphitheatre stage at exactly 7:04 p.m. and Amos ran off it, following her second encore, at 11 p.m. on the dot. The stuff in between was just really great piano rock. Billed as the "Lottapianos Tour," the nice thing about a Tori Amos/ Ben Folds crowd is that they genuinely appreciate great musicianship. So you don't stand for most of the show, so there.s not a lot of jumping up and down and dancing . maybe the sitting helps you concentrate on the true artistry possible on rock.s most overlooked instrument . the piano. Amos can take the piano from raucous and thunderous to sweet and music box-like within a matter of bars. And there.s just something about being able to play more than one keyboard simultaneously that seems infinitely more impressive than some roadie appearing from the wings to switch off guitars. Emerging onstage in white flowing robes lit up by a bright white spotlight, Amos achieved a fairly good mix of old and new to keep the fans happy. She performed six tracks from 2002.s Scarlet.s Walk, the album she was, of course, there to promote, and an array of vintage Tori, opting to completely ignore 1998.s From The Choirgirl Hotel. Crowd favourites included: "A Sorta Fairytale," "Little Earthquakes," "God," "Bells For Her," "Cornflake Girl," "I Can.t See New York," "Precious Things," and her grand finale, "Hey Jupiter." Undoubtedly she put on a good show. She played for over two hours . a half hour of that was her two encores, and the congregation still wasn.t ready to let her go. I was though. I don.t know what it was. Maybe it was the frustration of trying to decode what she was saying; maybe it was that I.ve been out of the Tori scene for too long, or maybe it was that the guy beside me was SO into it that it was distracting, but there was something about this performance that failed to engage. Ben Folds, on the other hand, deserves an honourable mention for engagement. Despite the fact that, due to the early hour, people took their seats throughout his entire performance, Folds had the audience absolutely involved. Performing completely solo, he commissioned the audience to do call and response to fill in for the horn section on "Army" and he taught the crowd the three-part harmony for "Not The Same." The highlight of the show was most definitely during "Steven.s Last Night In Town," where Folds performed an all-out drum solo while a drum kit was built around him, only to be deconstructed again as soon as the solo was over. So while one cannot overlook Tori Amos. immense talent, when it came to showmanship, Ben Folds stole the show. ------------------------------ End of precious-things-digest V8 #193 *************************************