re: Philly North Star Bar Show

[Benjamin Torbert <bct1@duke.edu>]

I haven't yet seen a complete list yet, so here you go:

1 Nobody #1
2 Bothered 3.0
3 Show me
4 Cruel & Pretty
5 She
6 Suitcase
7 Lifelong Fling
8 Ohio
9 BPD
10 All I Need is Everything
11 The World can Wait
12 When I Go

E1 Professional Daydreamer
E2 My Love is a Fever
E3 Jack's Valentine (by loud request downstairs)
E4 Changes Come

Comments:

N#1 - neo-Jack on steel guitar thingie
Bothered - tres Zeppelinish, whole lot of drums, steel guitar, neo-Jack
	singing back-up
Show Me - Some lucky bastard volunteers his denim shirt for Karin to sweat
	on (the bar was about 88 degrees).  L gets Hammond-happy.
C&P - bass, drums, L piano, slide guitar
She - intese weird cool effect on guitar, meaty bass neo-Jack AMAZING on
	guitar solo
Suitcase - K no guitar, neo-Jack on acoustic
Lifelong Fling - K dances on the tops of the words, this song much better
	live, sexy bass
Ohio - K, very lovely singing, more use of rubato than usual to great
	effect, and back to my fave pronunciation of "Vah-looo-rie"
BPD - K describes as "hissy fit."  More angry than on album, works well
All I Need - Full band, lots of Hammond, neo-Jack blows walls out with
	awesome metallish solo
tWCW - way metally
Changes Come - works astoundingly well with extended jam

Commentary (as opposed to comment ha ha)

1) How does Karin still look 24?  What is she doing to acheive this?

2) I apologize for not knowing neo-Jack's name.  I haven't caught it yet.
Paul something?

3) This concert really sold me on some songs that aren't my favorites.  To
be honest, Lifelong Fling is the only song I ever skip on Ohio I. (Now
donning raincoat to repel the rotten vegetables about to be thrown my
way). The lyrics are good, but the sound feels to me like contrived and
too heavily post-produced in a cheesey Brandy-esque way.  This songs
works 15 times better live--I really like it.  For one thing, it extends
the instrumental jam which I thought was the best part of the song on the
CD.  For another, you just have to hear this sort of
slinky-cat-on-rooftops thing K does with her voice on the lyrics.  It
really works.  The other song that isn't one of my favorites on the album
is BPD, but this too is transformed live.  On the album there's nothing
wrong with it if you like the Beatles (I don't, understatement of the
year).  But the "crying out" sequence comes out slightly labored on the
disc, and the album version of BPD is one of the extremely rare times
where Karin doesn't really sell me the song insofar as expression goes.
Live, it was comepletely different.  She sounds totally angry at the
second person of the song.  The "hissy fit" angle works so well.  Go with
it, girl!

I hope no one thinks I'm complaining about LF and BPD.  What I'm saying
here is this is the mark of true artistry: in person, you can sell me on
some of my least favorite part of your rep.  I think that's one of the
highest compliments you can pay.  Of course I loved Changes Come.  But
this concert sold me on Lifelong Fling.

4) Changes Come, I believe, is their finest song to date.  Here are some
reasons why.

a) It is, if I'm not mistaken, in d-minor.  This is the key of Beethoven's
9th, of Bach's 2nd violin partita, of Mahler's 3rd and 9th, and of many
tortured souls in Wagner.

b) The song has the fairly rare K&L combo that has produced some of the
most amazing songs, which is both of them writing words and her doing the
music.  Other such songs are She, The World can Wait, I Let it Go, It's
Never Quite What it Seems, and Everyman's Daughter.  Scanning thru the
credits of all the albums, usually when K writes the music, she's also
credited solo on the words too.

c) the lyrics are masteful beyond compare.  There are several Over the
Rhine hallmarks here.  One, the song sounds, at least at first, as though
as it could be about a human-human relationship or a human-divine
relationship (this changes at "Jesus come").  Cf. All I Need, Faithfully
Dangerous, Happy to be So.  Two, the lyrics tend to be deliciously
ambiguous.  Examples:

Changes come / Turn my world around / Changes come / Bring the whole thing down

Is this imperative/hortative, or it it just poetically deleted subjects,
which would give the words an entirely different sense.  You don't find
out until it changes to the exhortation "Jesus come."

I have my father's hand / I have my mother's tongue / I look for
redemption in everyone

Does this mean "I try to see something redemptive about every person I
meet" or does it mean "I'm so in need of Grace that sometimes I look for
redpemtion through human beings rather than God?  And what to make of
father's hand / mother's tongue?  It this about original sin?

Is there still redemption for anyone?

This is a masterstroke.  It could be "Is Jesus' offer for 'whosoever shall
believe in me' still good.  Or it could be "Is there yet redemption for
*anybody at all?*

And of course you have the switch from Changes to Jesus.

________________________

I was thrilled with the song selection.  My only regret is that I still
haven't heard them do "I Let it Go" live.

OtR, always worth a day's drive.  I ended up electing not to catch the NYC
shows, but only because they're coming to Asheville which is only 3 hrs
from me.  I'll post a set list on the listserv for that one too if no one
else does.  I was thinking about catching the Arlington show, but it's on
a "school night" and I'm really sick of I-95 in Virginia, so we'll see.

BenT
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