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FW: The Shaft Show
Oops. I was supposed to forward this last week.
Zena showed up in my office to chastise me.
So, without further ado...
--
Chris Emery
Web Commerce Developer
chris.emery at ecoutlook_com
http://www.ecoutlook.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Neds-Fox [mailto:j-znf at email_msn.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 1999 4:19 PM
To: chris.emery at ecoutlook_com
Subject: The Shaft Show
I wanted to make some of my thoughts known about the Taft concert to the
exuberant listees (and I figured you'd appreciate my POV). Would you
forward this on?
Yours--
jnf
-------------------------------------------------
Concerning the Taft Theatre Christmas Extravaganza:
I imagine this is a bit late in list time, it being Wednesday and the
concert being last Saturday, but since I don't frequent the list anymore, it
took me a little longer to come around to posting.
It surprises me that the Taft show didn't strike anyone else as utterly
disappointing.
At the very least, it was redundant. Let me point out the new moments--
Little Girl Blue
Extra verse to Cast Me Away
Everything else has been played to death. A long, slow, painful death. I
haven't seen an OTR show in the last year and a half that hasn't opened with
Go Down Easy and closed with Latter Days (or vice versa), with June and
Bothered as encores, or contained an early rendition of Poughkeepsie and All
I Need Is Everything and a late rendition of Faithfully Dangerous and Jack's
Valentine.
Jack's Valentine. If I were going to set out to embarrass a legend, I
couldn't have picked a better way than to hand him a cd and its dust jacket
and make him quick-study a quirky rap that I've rehearsed a million times
and he hasn't heard even once-- and then proceed to (perhaps unwittingly)
mock him onstage when he botches the job. Karen and Terri weren't
incredibly helpful, but perhaps rote is law in the OTR camp: it's taboo to
change the rhythm structure of the song or improvise, even if you've asked
Leo Kotke to sing.
Over The Rhine are an over rehearsed band at this point. I suspect they
couldn't change their set list even if it did strike them as prudent to do
so. I was deeply disappointed to come to what was talked-up as a highly
retrospective, all-encompassing musical tour through OTR's 10 years and see
only relatively unimaginative versions of the songs that I've heard the last
five times I've seen them (and that includes all the back catalogue
surprises: Cast Me Away/And Can It Be? Schuba's, '98. Jacksie? Moonlight
Gardens, '99. My Love Is A Fever? Don't get me started).
All this, and I'm told that I can "figure it out" when Karen sympathetically
attempts to talk about the new album's release. I was fairly ashamed when I
read Linford's "Darth Vader status" letter, but I still wish he would be
genuine. My best guess: Linford likes very few of the songs he's written
and recorded over the last ten years. He doesn't want to revisit the past,
he only wants to look to the future. Sister, Someday, Should will never
again see the light of day because Linford has stopped caring about them.
Which is his prerogative, but shows little empathy with his fan base, many
of whom still rank Til We Have Faces and Patience among their top ten albums
of all time. It's also a difficult position for Linford to be in, because
at the moment he seems to have writer's block. Unless he's keeping all his
songs to himself, the only new tunes I've heard since I joined the list in
1998 are The World Can Wait and that America song, along with the Needle and
the Bruise, which is Jack's. And frankly, they're filler.
(I haven't examined this part of my disappointment until right now, but I
think I felt like the Christmas fare offered here was too little and too
little loved. This may be more because I've never been to an "OTR Christmas
Concert," and I expected something a little different-- more Christmas
music, or some such. Something different, at any rate. Thank You My Angel,
Mary's Waltz, Little Girl Blue-- these are the Christmas portion of the
show? Silent night, indeed.)
I suppose I was most surprised by the fact that, after about an hour of what
should have been a glorious show by a very good band at a wonderful theater
filled with a responsive audience... I realized that I didn't care. Nothing
moved me. "Could it be that I'd experience the casualty of your love?" I
could have been made of stone. "Christ the Savior is born," and all I can
think about is how cramped these seats are. The songs have stopped doing
anything for me. I'm oversaturated. I've heard OTR play them one too many
times exactly the same, in exactly the same order. Previously, I used to
hope that something new would happen, anything, and I could hold onto that
hope all the way to the end of the show, even though nothing new ever did
happen. I've run out of that hope. It made the Taft show a little
excruciating.
Incidentally, my decision following this show is not to see OTR again until
after new (and I mean "new") material comes out or they decide to revamp
their show. Because at this point, I'd rather listen to the albums. They
have more variety than what I'm told used to be a band who was better live.
I still really like Over The Rhine. In terms of musicians of quality who
don't shy away from writing about their Savior, they trounce hundreds. But
I'm baffled by the stubborn consistency with which they under-serve their
audiences. My suggestion, Linford, is that you revisit your old catalogue,
privately, with your bass or your piano or whatever, over the course of a
month or two, and you relearn all your old songs. And you relearn how to
love what you've done as much as you love what you do. And that way, maybe,
you can love what you do, and what you will do, with a better sense of
history and therefore a greater integrity, and your audience will benefit.
And so will you.
goodbye list,
jnf
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