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Yeah, I was not surprised that she played Real Love. Overall, it was pretty good…she never really shines in these late-show appearances the way she does in concert when she has a chance to get warmed up, but that’s okay. She certainly didn’t embarrass herself last night.
Well, I guess I’m somewhat of a moderate when it comes to this debate. I’ve seen Lucinda, let’s see, 7 times now (all in the past 3 years), and I enjoy the shows enough that I’m looking forward to seeing her again later this month, whatever she chooses to play. That said, I’m looking forward to oneshow…I had initially thought about doing Chicago as well as Madison, but the likelihood that the setlists would be nearly identical is enough to persuade me to just do one show. I’m also less enthralled with her recent material than I am with her old stuff, though that’s not to say I dislike the new songs, so that’s a contributing factor. (And I was planning on saving some money to catch a few shows on Dylan’s fall tour before he decided to thumb his nose at us and mostly stay in Canada this tour, but that’s another gripe entirely).
As with any artist, what Lucinda chooses to play is her own business entirely. I shudder at the idea that an artist is somehow obligated to do what the fans want. But having said all that…boy, it would be nice if she injected some more changes into her setlist from night to night. And I’m not talking about breaking out 20-year-old songs necessarily, either (though I’d love it if she did more of that). There are lesser-played songs from Essence onward that I’d love to hear. IMO, the setlists have been quite static for a couple years now, with the exception of inserting some brand-new songs. I’d welcome a bit of a shake-up. Until then, I’m content to catch a couple shows a year, and that’s about it for me.
Pitbull surely?
Argh, I missed the obvious joke! Oh well.
The really scary thing, at least about the woman I read about, is that apparently it’s not a wanting-to-vote-for-a-woman thing. If I recall, she said Palin is a refreshing outsider and she really loves that she’s just a “regular gal.” Why anyone would want the country to be led by a “regular guy/regular gal” is beyond me. Have they walked around lately and seen what “regular” people are like? 😕 I mean, when I vote, I do NOT want a president and vice president who are just like me. I want a president and vice president who are smarter, hold more nuanced opinions, and have a lot more leadership experience than me.
Ah, well…on a happier and Lucinda-related note, I just found out today she’ll be playing a show in Madison on 10/25, which works out fantastic for me. I’m sure I’ll get to hear some of her political views that night, as well as (I hope) a fantastic show. 8)
I think the reason that the Dixie Chicks got such a large backlash for their comments was largely that many of their fans were flag-waving conservatives. Plenty of musicians with a more stereotypically liberal following have been critical of Bush and the administration and faced little or no backlash, because frankly, they’re preaching to the choir.
As for Lucinda’s own preaching to the choir, I find it a little annoying at times, but she’s of course free to speak her mind. The protest EP is more high-profile than random comments between songs at shows, but I don’t think it’ll create too much controversy. Sad to say, most people don’t have a clue who she is. Heck, Merle Haggard did an album a couple years ago that wasn’t a protest album but did include two very pointed, very anti-war and anti-Bush administration songs, and I didn’t hear a peep about it one way or another in the media.
As for the EP, I’m lukewarm on it. After all, we’ll all get to hear Bone of Contention on the new album, and I don’t care for Marching the Hate Machines Into the Sun anyway…I think it’s a pretty lame song. Masters of War should be nice, but I’d rather it be a studio recording than a live one.
BTW, I don’t identify myself as either Democrat or Republican (both parties do their share to piss me off), though I’m definitely voting for Obama because he is by far the better of the choices. Frankly, I attribute the state of this country to the stupidity of a great many people. How else can you explain the fact that the McCain/Palin campaign has been getting away with and actually galvanizing support by spreading lies (and lies dealing with facts that are very easily looked up and even talked about by the media). Two big ones come to mind: telling people that Obama will raise their taxes (invalid unless she’s addressing a crowd of high-powered execs; anyone making less than $250k a year comes out better under Obama’s plan than under McCain’s), and telling people that Palin opposed the “bridge to nowhere” all along when she most certainly did not. I mean, I think of myself as a fairly reasonable person who can see both sides of almost any political argument, even if I feel strongly that one side is right. The people who want McCain because they think the Iraq war is a good thing, or love Palin because they want to ban all abortions…I strongly disagree with them, but I understand why they like the Republican ticket. What I don’t understand is how people can allow themselves to be misled by one candidate even in the face of clear and verifiable evidence.
Frankly, after reading an article the other day I wanted to just give up. A former Hillary Clinton supporter who disliked McCain because she felt that he would be no different than Bush was saying that now she’s voting McCain because he picked Palin and she likes Palin. Seriously? How could any liberal with even half a working brain cell consider a vote for McCain/Palin? Again, I’m not saying I don’t understand why people support them – I get that a large number of people in this country, for better or worse, support the neocon ideology. Fine. But liking Hillary and choosing to vote for McCain on the basis of Palin makes about as much sense as wanting a Chihuahua and buying a St. Bernard.As far as I’m concerned, Tom Overby should be able to post whatever he sees fit, whether it’s positive or negative toward fans or certain posters. An honest, open dialogue (or at least, as open as a manager can be with fans) between an artist’s manager and her fans is pretty rare IMO. I also find it hard to believe that some people are shocked that his opinion is going to be highly in favor of what Lucinda’s doing right now. Even if your opinion is 180 degrees opposite, so what? As far as I know, no one has had posts deleted or censored here; you’re free to express your opinion just as he’s free to express his.
That being so why not treat it as such for once and refocus the strategy to actually concentrate on giving the public what they want at gigs? How many times do paying customers have to say they were disappointed by the product before somebody tries to address the issue of ragged performances and erratic sets?
While I’m a champion of the kind of interaction between fans and Lucinda’s people that goes on at this site, I think this is going way too far. Maybe it’s your use of the term “product” to describe a concert, but I have a natural revulsion toward approaching a concert the same way I approach laundry detergent. I think it’s great that there’s an open forum here where we can voice our opinions and make our suggestions, and I hope that much of that gets communicated to Lucinda. What I don’t wish for is a consumer-business relationship where she tries to conform to our wishes. That’s not the job of any artist. Would I love for her to focus more on some of her older songs in concert? Absolutely. But only if she has the desire to sing them and bring them back to life, not if she does it because the fans demand it. If Lucinda wants to perform nothing but newer material, or hell, if she wants to sing a medley of Britney Spears songs every night while accompanying herself on the kazoo, that’s her prerogative as an artist. And it’s our prerogative as fans to either support that by attending shows, or not. When artists put a higher value on “customer satisfaction” than they do on their performances, nobody wins.
As far as the setlist, you can poke through threads here with setlists from this summer to get a pretty good idea. She doesn’t seem to vary her setlists too much from night to night, though she doesn’t play the exact some songs generally either. I’ve seen her three times now at the Riviera, and it’s a pretty nice place to catch a show. It’ll be GA, standing room only on the floor; I think there are seats in the balcony. It’s a pretty small club, so any place you end up you won’t be too far from the stage. If you’re like me, you’ll want to get right up front to the edge of the stage, just a few feet from Lucinda as she sings and plays. 🙂 To do that, you’ll want to line up early…anywhere from mid- to late-afternoon depending on when other fans show up.
I’d say I’ll see you at the show, but I’m waiting/hoping for more news on if she’s going to do a second night there on the 25th. A Saturday show fits into my schedule much better, and pending announcement of Bob Dylan’s fall schedule it looks like I may only do one Lucinda show. Talk about tough choices…
Tom, thanks for posting your input. I didn’t find it to be offensive or confrontational at all, though I agreed with parts and disagreed with others. I also want to add right away that I was not at the show that was the original topic of this thread, so my comments are only relevant to the discussion that has followed.
Anyway, I do have to quibble with one thing you said:
This is first time in her career that she’s even had new albums out in consecutive years so from 2004-2006 there weren’t even any new songs tp play.
While there was certainly a gap between World Without Tears and West, she was most certainly playing new songs in 2005 and 2006. I know because I heard some of them at shows I attended. 😉 Personally, I enjoyed most of the new songs I heard; I can still remember the heart-stopping Where Is My Love from Chicago in 2005 that blew away any other I’ve heard since then, including the album cut. And I definitely appreciate that Lucinda’s willing to give us a glimpse of songs she’s written fairly recently and still working through onstage.
Anyway, while I understand that Lucinda is naturally going to be focused on her new material and what’s freshest to her, you have to understand that fans who consider earlier albums to be their favorites are naturally going to hope that she plays more songs from them. Neither Lucinda nor the fans who want to hear songs from 10-20 years ago are wrong; it’s just the nature of seeing an artist who has done a lot in her career and moved through different styles of music in the process.
I do feel that a couple comments you made suggest that you don’t understand where fans who wish she’d play more of her earlier music are coming from. You commented “there are only 3 albums prior to Essence,” and highlighted that those albums are 10-20 years old. No offense, but that’s kind of like saying to a Dylan fan “well, he only did 7 albums prior to 1967, and those albums are over 40 years old, so why would he play anything from them now (and why would you want to hear them)?” The answer, of course, would be that in the opinion of many, they constitute the pinnacle of his songwriting and it’s only natural that fans who rate those songs the highest would want to hear them live even decades later.
Personally, I doubt Lucinda will ever put out an album to rival Car Wheels in my mind. That’s not a dig on her current work, but merely a statement of appreciation for the level she reached on that album. The vocals, music, and songwriting came together to create a truly magical album, and one that is very special to me. (In fairness, I’ll also note that she does regularly play songs from Car Wheels; it’s not like she’s turned her back on the album).
And let me be clear: my relative lack of enthusiasm for her newer songs compared to her older ones has less to do with my assessment of the quality of her new work than it does with my personal genre preference. I think the rock sound she’s striving for is exciting to a great extent, but I’ll always prefer the rootsier sound of her earlier work. To each their own; it’s the price to pay, after all, for following an artist who doesn’t always work in the same genre and doesn’t keep writing songs that sound the same.
One last comment in this long-winded post: I know I had hoped that after she revisited each of her older albums last fall she would reintroduce a few long-discarded songs into the setlist on a regular basis. She doesn’t owe anyone that, of course (that she played those full-album shows at all and made the CDs available to fans is more than we could ask, and more than many artists have done), but that she revisited those songs for those shows led me to hope they’d continue to be played now and again. (I bet I Just Wanted To See You So Bad would make a rocking opener, BTW :wink:)
Thanks for the info, Inside Job. Seeing “TBA” for 10/25 made me think that there was at least a chance there would be a second show at the Riviera. It’ll be nice if that happens.
The Riviera’s a nice venue. I’m not thrilled about a GA show (both because of the excellent luck I’ve had getting great seats for Lucinda shows, and because due to work obligations I won’t be able to line up early), but it’s a small place and if I can’t get right in front of the stage, so be it. 🙂
Thanks for the update, Inside Job. I’ll plan on hitting Chicago (and I’m intrigued by the “TBD” dates, particularly the one on the 25th :)), and I’ll have to think about Columbus. I’m scheduled to be there on business that day anyway, and I could probably spare a couple hours in the evening…
As for “The Book,” I don’t really have a problem with it. I much prefer her approach to Dylan’s, where he uses lyric sheets on his keyboard but acts as if they don’t exist. Arguably, the lyric sheets are one of the reasons he’s moved from guitar to keyboard in the past few years…and if that’s true, that’s a shame. I do think it borders on ridiculous how much she uses the lyric sheets, but I don’t think it detracts from the performance.
Restarting songs doesn’t bother me too much. It’s a little annoying when it happens several times in a show, but if the other option is a subpar performance of the song, restarting it makes sense.
Starting late does annoy me when there’s a curfew involved, and I posted on this subject on another thread recently. I’ve felt that Lucinda performed long enough at every show I’ve attended – ~2 hours is certainly reasonable – but it annoys me that they play venues with 11:00 curfews and don’t come on stage until around 9:00, effectively making it impossible for her to perform longer even if she wanted to.
The rants don’t really bother me. If she did something like walk off stage mid-show, that would be extremely unprofessional, but frankly I think the rants can lead to more passionate performances.
Little Honey not only collects some of the leftover songs from West that didn’t fit into that record’s heavy themes of death and betrayal, but also includes some much older songs that never made it out of the studio such as the 23-year-old ballad ‘Circles & Xs’ and ‘Well Well Well’, a fresh recording of an old demo Lucinda cut for her 1992 album Sweet Old World.
Now that is interesting, assuming it’s true. I’ve always hoped that Lucinda would revisit certain songs of hers; a couple of them that never made it to albums are still among my favorite songs. “All I Want,” in particular, I’d love to hear her take on now, either in performance or on an album.
See, my feeling on Bootleg Series releases is that I’m a lot more interested in stuff that doesn’t already circulate on bootleg (unless it only circulates in poor quality). Even if these outtakes turn out to be only so-so, what excites me is that I couldn’t get them anywhere else. I agree, it would be interesting if they released a born-again show, but then again…I pretty much either have boots of any given show from that period, or could obtain them if I really wanted to. What gets me salivating are outtakes that nobody’s heard (or, in the case of the Time Out of Mind/Modern Times stuff, outtakes that no one had even really confirmed the existence of).
I like Dreamin’ Of You. It’s really interesting to hear how he was trying out lyrics that ended up in other songs (as you mentioned, Standing in the Doorway, but also a couple others), as well as to hear a song that sonically would have seemed so out-of-place on Time out of Mind. If the rest of the Bootleg Series Vol. 8 is this good, it won’t be too much of a rip-off. 😉
IMO, Sony really blundered on the Dylan set. These are outtakes which, while they really excite the obsessive fans (did you download the free track from bobdylan.com, ParkerCA? Really interesting…), aren’t really that exciting to the general public. Any casual fan who might be interested in the 3-disc set is never going to buy it at $130, and many more serious fans won’t buy it either because they can’t afford it or because the price offends them. The other fact is, even for people who generally don’t condone stealing music, it’s a lot easier to rationalize when Sony is pretty much saying with a straight face that the 3rd disc is worth $100. I can’t wait to see what the sales figures are for this release, and I’d love to be able to know what the sales figures would be if the 3-disc set was priced even on the high side of reasonable – say, $60.
Again, any of Lucinda’s people reading…this is what NOT to do to your fans.
