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Tin Angel Show Review (long and rambling-- be warned.)
Subj:
Ha!
Date:
Fri, 15 Dec 2000 10:47:33 PM Eastern Standard Time
From:
Ysobelle
To:
over-the-rhine at actwin_com
Here`s a first- lostee email from the show itself! Yay super cell phone! 1st
show rocked. Full report when i get home after #2!
Yeah, well, that's what SHOULD have come through last night. However, technology being what it is, I certainly didn't see it show up. Did you?
Anyway, yes, I WAS at both Over the Rhine shows last night at the Tin Angel. And I was excessively glad I did so. I saw the band last night that dragged me out of Florida to traipse all over the country-- to OHIO, for G-d's sake!-- in quest of a perfect musical experience. And boy howdy, did I get it. Wooty woot!
Augmented by Chris Donahue (sp?) on bass and Dale Baker from SNtR on drums, last night's OtR rocked the house big-time. Halfway through the show, I realised how much my expectations have been diminished by the simple fact that there's been no rhythm section the last half-dozen times I've seem them over the years. And it's really a different band when that happens. Not that it's bad, but it's not, to me, up to its potential.
For the first show, I was at a table halfway back with a friend of mine and her husband-- complete OtR virgins both. They had no idea what to expect since, as I think you all know, OtR is rather difficult to describe. I, of course, began a running setlist on the back of a purloined "Reserved" table card. After the opener, a very funny young woman named Jennifer Marks who did a song called "High School Reunion" which was definitely worth the price of admission, Linford, walking through the rather tightly-packed space, whomped into the back of my seat. I turned around to apologise for having my arm in the way, and he, in turn, apologised for said whomping. Endearingly, he introduced himself to me, as if I wouldn't know who he was. He did admit, though, that he was pretty sure we'd met a few times before, to which I agreed. He leaned over the table to see what I was writing, and laughed that I was keeping a setlist. "Well," I laughed back, "SOMEONE has to tell the list." I'm goin!
g to pretend I didn't see a trac
e of naked fear in his face as he backed away from one of those damn Lostees, always following and haunting him...muhaha!
Anyway.
Everyone was quite casually dressed-- jeans all 'round. Sophie, who is French and therefore the final arbiter of all fashion, quite approved of Karin's multi-print red top with the flared cuffs, though I thought it looked a bit like a crowd of rabid bandannas had attacked her. Jack's jeans hems were halfway to his knees. The avowed collarbones-worshippers among us would have drooled over Terri's nearly off-the-shoulder, clingy top, by the way.
They opened the first set with "Latter Days." A pretty hip, rockin' LD that set the stage for a fast, upbeat show. Everything was faster, looser, and hipper. VERY good dogs. And very, very bad doggies, too. Woowoo!
As follows:
Latter Days
All I Need is Everything
(in the margin, I here wrote, "Does Karin look like Joni Mitchell?" It's gotta be the hair.)
Anything At All
Little Blue River/Hymn
(Linford said that on the new record, this is the longest song they thing they've ever recorded, mostly because during recording, Karin improvised a hymn at the end of it. It was written, he said, years ago on a trip home from Chicago.)
Anyway
(Karin told the story of meeting Rose at their father's funeral, then revealed that Rose then used this song as her wedding dance.)
Fairpoint Diary
(Which I hadn't heard before. YUM!)
Silent Night
Mary's Waltz-- Karin & Linford alone
(Linford started telling a long, rambling Linfordesque story about how people always ask if the story's true, and how when you write, you create characters that just seem so real, and then you live with them, and then you nurture them, and then you... "Kill them," Karin cut in.)
Rhapsodie (by request)
Cowboy Junkies' "Now I Know," with Jack rejoining them.
Faithfully Dangerous ("We've never played this yet on this tour, but we always look at the room and decide what the room wants-- so we pulled this one out of the closet," said Linford.)
Poughkeepsie (I didn't know this song COULD rock, but it did. Even got me a little teary.)
And Can It Be
They left to whoops and hollers, and came back to what Linford at one point described at one of the smallest stages they'd ever seen. I agree-- if the stage were the bedroom in an apartment you were shown, you surely wouldn't rent the place. It's roughly nine by nine at most, and there were six of them up there. Poor Dale had to literally climb over his own drum kit to get out. It was packed. At any rate, upon their return, Karin growled at the crowd that we could now "take our polite shoes off."
My Love Is A Fever
Daaaaamn. Yummy!
The second show was much the same, although poor Jennifer Marks was quite thrown off her mark by the soundguy for the venue scrambling up behind her as she sang and somehow causing some terrible noise to crash out in the middle of her song at its funniest line. There were about six of us who'd seen her first set, and we were now right up next to the stage, perched on bar stools not four feet from the mic. We laughed encouragingly with her, and smiled at her, and she later said she couldn't have gotten through the show without us. I felt like I'd done my good deed for the evening. She even signed the copy of her CD I bought with warm thanks to me for "all the smiles and for having the coolest nose ring." I did indeed wear the chain. She remarked between sets that she'd never have the guts to get a nosering herself, and one girl laughed and pointed out that she gets onstage and sings her soul to complete strangers every night.
Very oddly, the whole place seemed to smell like the dorm room of my best friend in college-- strange pot pourri and candles and other undefinable but comfy things one doesn't normally expect to find in what is, essentially, a bar. And at one point, "Fairpoint Diary," I believe, I was reminded of a grey day "down the shore," as we say here, at Cape May, perhaps, driving down past the old Victorian summer homes-- even though I don't think I've ever actually done so.
At any rate, I found it amusing that during the second set, after Linford introdued "Anything At All" by saying it's one karin wrote, and it's been on his mind a lot lately while he tries to figure out what it means, that he mentioned it'd been written in Indiana, which caused a whoop from a member of the audience. Said whooper was revealed to be from West Lafayette, where the band had, apparently, been just the week before (bink?). All parties concerned seemed to have no problems with Indiana. No one mentioned NASCAR or their favourite sexual position.
And yes, according to Linford and Karin, the release date for "Films for Radio" is March 13th.
They switched "Etcetera Whatever" for the CJ's song, and once again closed with "My Love is a Fever." The setlist, which I quickly purloined, had "lake a radidlio" listed at the very end but, alas, it was not to be.
So I had fun. I saw the OtR of old-- a fun band that I thoroughly enjoyed, with a lot of fun people and good vibes all round. It was a rather sensuous, immersing show, if that makes sense. I got the feeling of swimming in good music on a warm evening under clear, bright stars. Jack has become such a seamless part of Over the Rhine v4.0 that I'm able now to throroughly enjoy his excellent guitar work without constantly thinking of Ric anymore. Different, very different-- but equally excellent. I had a good time absorbing everything. If the chocolate silk cake hadn't been decidedly prohibitively expensive ($6 for CAKE???) it would have been a perfect accent to a perfect evening. But as it is, I'm fine without the calories and I left quite content.
And yes, the bunnies ARE adorable.
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