L o b a B l a n c a {dot} c o m

It takes years to shape a Bösendorfer piano. The wood, carefully selected among the forest of possibilities owned and maintained by the Bösendorfer company, is weather-aged for four years or more. Each shell is then hand-carved, hand-curved, workers molding the forms with the stroke and care of a devoted lover. They believe that they transfer some essence of themselves into these instruments through their touch, that their emotional bearing as they work can affect the timbre and character of the final product. This is not a pedestrian piano. This is the culmination of nearly 200 years of devotion to craft and care—the exquisite, dark richness of sound released from within incomparable to any other.

All of this and more will one day be written upon a placard and placed within the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame …perhaps even installed right next to one of these magnificent creatures whose music once held audiences under the enchantments of its melodic mistress.

Many things can (and have been) said about Tori Amos, but above all else, one truth is clear: She is uniquely focused—in her effort, in her skill, in her creativity. The world as filtered through her mind and released through lyrics that often defy comprehension is equally magical and malevolent. She is a pragmatist and a dreamer, her hands possessed by a musical sorcery when they come in contact with the keys of her mighty Bösendorfer beauties. There are few pianists who can rival Amos’s preternatural aptitude. Hyperbole be damned—to watch her play is to watch divinity set free.

Not everything that Amos has done throughout her career has resonated with me on a positive level. However, I will never deny my admiration of the desire that presses her onward in her exploration of sound and meaning, even when it falls short of my own personal boundaries of enjoyment. She stands unafraid of pulling forward whatever lives within her, examining it and presenting with an unparalleled candor. She is also unafraid of expanding beyond the rote safety of one specific genre, as so many musicians of her longevity are. Those musicians often stagnate within the confines of sound and style that no longer suit them, too afraid at this point in their careers to embrace the duality of salvation or failure that change could bring.

Fortunately, Amos has practically made a career of embracing change. And so it goes with her latest release, Night of Hunters. Her first offering on new label Deutsche Grammophon, this release marks Amos’s entry into yet another previously unexplored genre, the reinterpretation of classical music concepts through her distinctively contemporary lens. I was admittedly wary when I first heard about this release and have yet to purchase it. I’m not entirely certain what I find so off-putting about this concept. I’m still wrestling with that.

I can say, with all certainty, that last night has convinced me that Amos needs to continue with this particular collaborative exploration. She returned home to us last night, playing Constitution Hall in downtown D.C. This was my ninth time seeing her in concert—and it might qualify as one of my favorite performances. Amos is bliss by herself, but when joined by the skilled efforts of a string quartet, she transcended expectation in extraordinary ways.

It wasn’t her new music that reached me. In fact, the new songs that appeared at the beginning of last night’s playlist left me feeling a bit apprehensive regarding how enjoyable the rest of the concert would be. Also, the sound technicians overcompensated in their attempts to raise her voice above its accompanying instruments, which left the quality distorted and painfully sibilant. Once the technical glitches were sorted and she began to move more deeply into the bramble of her musical oeuvre, that was when the hunter captured me.

Amos has always had an uncanny ability to reinterpret her own music when playing to a live audience. It’s one of the reasons I love going to see her whenever she comes to town. Last night, with the added layering of violins and cello, she took familiar standards to levels of surprising complexity and reinvention. The standouts of the evening were a musical mash-up of her song “God” with Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” and Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”; “Winter,” which has always been one of my favorite Amos songs and took pride of place as my favorite song from last night’s performance; and “Cruel,” in which her accompanying string quartet embraced Amos’s approach to the untethered exploration of their musical instruments.

For the moment, there are clips on YouTube of each of these songs. The version of “Winter” that I found wasn’t quite as expansive as the version last night; I do believe the artists are growing more comfortable with their freestyle expressionism with each playing. The version of “Cruel” that I found, however, is quite close to what we heard last night. I only wish you could see more of the quartet. I encourage you to enjoy them while they remain online, denizens:

I would love to see what we witnessed at last night’s concert turned into to a revisiting of her earlier music in this fashion, for studio release. I doubt that will happen, but one never can tell when it comes to Amos.

So I mentioned last Friday that one of my future flashbacks would be a response to an ImagiFriend^TM challenge. I’m to blog about music. While drinking.

Well, guess what, denizens? Loba has, indeed, been partaking of a great deal of beer-y goodness this evening. And it still continues to flow as I type. I’m finishing up the vestiges of a double chocolate stout, which is chasing on the heels of a London ale, a smoked porter, a…something dark…followed by a something lighter but not too light because I hate those beers…bottom line is, I’ve been drinking. Drinking to the point where my tongue feels a little numb and everything has that pretty hazy glow. And I’m still drinking. So that part of the challenge is being met.

What sparked this challenge was two-part and started with this review of Madonna’s most recent CD, Hard Candy. The only comments I would add to this review are that the only thing hard about this album is trying to listen to it. And, just like candy, it indeed sucks.

The second part of the challenge came from this post, in which my ImagiFriend^TM expounds upon memories of the music that served as the soundtrack to his youth.

It’s like a Flashback Friday. Only better. And boozy-awesome.

Well, denizens. I can’t really expound on music in any sort of knowledgeable way. I think I’ve proven that every time I’ve written something tagged under my Music category.

Wow. That’s a weird cross-selection of posts, innit?

But I can tell you why I love Madonna’s Ray of Light and why I think it’s going to be remembered as her greatest album EVAR.

First, a little backstory. RoL was Madonna’s first new studio release since 1994′s Bedtime Stories. This ’94 offering is actually a fine album and indicative both of her continuing evolution away from her early bubble gum pop days and her journey toward a more mature sound and style. I think the evolution had actually begun on 1992’s Erotica, but Madonna was deep in the throes of a very public bout of titillation-itis at the time, including her little role-playing game as Dieta vonSchtoopyPants, so many of Erotica’s better points were drowned out by the roar of “She’s nekkid! Again!!” I’d argue, though, that those who ignored Erotica because they were a bit turned off or burned out by Madonna-Nude-A-Rama should give it a try now.

Back to Bedtime Stories. Solid effort with a nice urban vibe, even if it is a little on the bass-heavy side (Madonna would go on to prove that she hadn’t even begun to bass it up, giving us in Hard Candy several songs that sound like they’re playing through tinny Value Village speakers with blown-out subwoofers). Madonna was beginning to move into a more adult sound quite expertly, which wasn’t all that shocking. If Madonna has proven anything throughout her career, it’s that she’s not at all averse to changing things up a bit.

However, her music career became side-tracked after this 1994 release by being cast as Eva Perón in the 1996 film adaptaion of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical, Evita. I won’t lie, denizens. I was in line on opening day to see Evita. I had been waiting pretty much the bulk of my lifetime at that point for: A) the film adaptation of this movie to finally get the green light; and B) for Madonna to finally be given the role that seemed to be her destiny.

Yeah, I said destiny. Your density has popped me to you, Lorraine.

Unfortunately, the movie didn’t not suck. Which was a huge disappointment to me. I wanted so very much for this to be the greatest musical film in the history of the genre, but Hollywood polished the soul completely out of it. And, prophets bless Antonio Banderas, but the man can’t sing. Plus, they covered up Madonna’s diastema, which probably upset me more thna it really should have.

[Loba Tangent: Get your minds out of the gutter, denizens; that’s just a fancy word for the gap between her front teeth. I kind of have a weird fascination with people with diastema. I can’t explain it. I just enjoy it.]

I will say this, though: This is the very best performance I think we will ever see from Madonna in a leading role. I say this based solely on the one song she was allowed to perform “live” on set rather than lip-sync. It’s toward the end of the play. That’s all I’m going to say. Every time I have seen this particular point in th emovie, I get teared up.

Yeah, so after Evita, Madonna sort of went silent for a while. Well, there was the fact that she found out that she was pregnant while she was filming. That might have had something to do with her radio silence. She gave birth to her daughter, Lourdes, in October 1996. Then, we heard nothing from her.

Until March 3, 1998.

I was a flat-broke student at the University of Maryland at this point, with barely enough money to cover all the parking tickets that I kept getting. But I knew damn good and well that I was going to buy this CD, the day it released, no matter what it cost. I had been waiting four long years to hear something new from the Material Girl, goddammit. Nothing was going to stop me.

Oh, what a circus! Oh, what a show!

This was a Madonna like no other. All those months she’d spent preparing for her role as Eva Perón had left her with a voice much stronger, much more refined, and much more nuanced than it had ever sounded before. And, gods, that sound…William Orbit took her from the land of bubble gum pop that she had previously inhabited and shifted her to a completely new ZIP code deeply entrenched in a land of rich bass and bad-ass electronica sizzle, a sound that was on the fringes of acceptability at the time but slowly working its way into the mainstream. However, Madonna being who she is, grabbed onto this still underground sound and dragged it into the light in one of the most amazing returns to pop culture prominence ever recorded.

To me, RoL is practically perfect in every way. New sound. New image. New outlook. Gorgeous, rich vocals; lyrics overflowing with eloquence and depth; and these infectious beats that were so new and inventive…like nothing we’d yet heard. Sure, it was destined to be played out to the point of nausea, but Madonna was one of the first artists to really explore the space of this particular beat-heavy genre. And she did it in tellingly classy ways, something that would diminish with time until we ended up with the hot mess of Hard Candy.

I remember reading reviews of RoL that were…well, unkind is a nice way of putting it. The review in teh school papper was particularly scathing, with the reviewer ending with a comment that basically stated that he hoped Madonna was a better mother than she was a musician now. I couldn’t understand this sentiment then, and I still don’t understand it. Minus a few minor stumbles (I have to confess, denizens, I’m not a particularly big fan of “Mer Girl” or “Little Star”), this CD is holistically such a powerful series of songs. Hell, even the songs that I don’t particularly like retain a redeeming quality or two, either through strong lyrics or a particularly tasty beat. I can only assume that these negative sentiments stemmed from the fact that this was such a

[Loba Tangent: Okay, see what happened there at the end of that previous paragraph? I started watching YouTube videos of songs from RoL and I ended up forgetting what I was going to write. Yeah. But I have realized that I would love to have a DVD collection of Madonna's videos. Except for that one where she's dry-humping Justin Timberlake. No one needs to see that.]

Beyond being a powerful compilation of music in its own right, RoL also helped re-establish Madonna as a standard bearer for the club culture. It’s no secret that Madonna is a dance club icon. She got her start in the NYC club scene, ffs. But, oh the tasty phat beatz that came from remixes.

My own clubbing days had a very limited shelf life, butMadonna was definitely one of the major players from the soundtrack of those days.

Wait. Let’s relive Loba’s Club Days, shall we?

Woah.

That video would probably look way better to me if I was high rather than tpisy. Er, tipsy. Still…Madonna with something close to her real hair color, and those icy cerulean eyes? Snerf!

How about this one? It’s another remix that I remember being HUGE during my club days:

I could grok someone for a Long Island Iced Tea right about now. And, really, “Frozen” was not only one of my favorite RoL songs in whatever format I heard it, it was also my favorite video from this album. I remember sitting there for several hours, waiting to download the Quicktime version through my 56K connection. Oh, those crazy dial-up days.

One more. Calderone Club mix of “Beautiful Stranger,” the song Madonna did for Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me:

And I’m spent.

I love how this song supposedly sprang from the friendship that Madonna and Myers had formed during that SNL “Wayne’s World” skit from back when the show was funny. I only wish that she’d stopped at doing a song for the movies that spoofed James Bond. Because, really, did any of us need to hear “Die Antoher Day”? I mean, come on, Madge…did you really use Sigmund Freud’s name as a lyric? Really? Plus, by this point, Madonna was starting down the path of self-immolation through excessive self-emulation. She was dancing dangerously close to turning herself into a parody of herself…something that she didn’t completely achieve until American Life, (rapping about soy lattes, Mini Coopers, and pilates? IT BURNS!!!) with a brief respite with Confessions on a Dance Floor, before returning full-throttle to parody mode with that shit she just recenlty released.

Really, she’s just a hot mess now.

I actually really like the original version (both song and video) of “Beautiful Stranger.” In fact, when I think of Madonna’s most “prime” physical appearance, it’s usually the Ray of Light/”Beautiful Stranger” era of videos that come to mind. Gone was the baby-faced vixen with the peroxide-frizzed hair and “Boy Toy” buckles. She was still smokin’ hot but now with haute couture coif and clothing and a body toned beyond belief. I mean, look at those arms in “Beautiful Stranger”! I still want arms like that. And, even though I know it’s in no way true? In my mind, I was dancing just like she was in that Austin Powers video when I was getting my grind on in the clubs.

Oh wow, but I love Madonna. Not Madonna now, but the Madonna of my misspent youth. Now, she just makes me sad. But back then? Not sad. At. All.

What the hell was I saying? I don’t even know anymore, denizesn. But my beer is now all gone and I have a suddne craving for a peanut butter and banana sandwich. And I see lots of little red squiggles, letting me know that my typing has officially gone to shit in this post. But I’m leaving it the way it is. Because that’s the kind of wolf I am. One who lives up to challenges. Especially ones that involve alcohol. I don’t even know if what I’ve written makes any bit of sense. But I know at least that I have included a lot of links to videos. Hopefully, those will keep you entertained. They’ve definitely made me happy.

Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in!

Okay, so it’s not as dramatic as that, Mr. Corleone, but I do believe I won’t ever shake this utterly unexpected happy feeling I continue to harbor in my dark lupine soul for country music.

[Loba Note: I guess it would be more appropriate to state that I harbor this love in the darkness where a soul should theoretically exist…]

No, not all country music. I’ve already established that there was a definite dimming of my country music love a few years ago. And yet I continue to keep tabs on a select few who succeeded in rising above the intrinsic issues I continue to have with the genre.

Terri Clark is one of Loba’s Chosen Few.

She’s a bit of a black sheep in the country family, to be sure. First, start with the fact that she’s not really “country,” by the xenophobic Amuhrakin definition of the word. Born in Montréal and raised in Medicine Hat, Clark is one of those “furraners” that we don’t take to liking all that much down here in the States. However, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee, when she was 18 years old, which means that she’s spent more of her life here than among her own people. I guess that counts for something (or at least makes me wonder if her grasp on sanity is as questionable as my own).

Next is the fact that Clark is unrepentantly country in the best sense of the word. While many within the genre, including a bulk of the red-hot-at-the-time female artists, decamped to that in-between land called “Crossover Track” back in the late 90s, churning out tarted-up poppy drivel that barely qualified as country music, Clark stuck to her guns and her cowboy hats. Every single one of her albums is filled with songs that won’t ever be heard on heavy rotation on rock-lite radio stations that typically turn up their noses to music that includes wondrous instruments like banjos, fiddles, mandolins, and slide guitars. Some of Clark’s songs even include {gasp} cowbell.

[Loba Tangent: Okay, I’m not really sure how I feel about the cowbell songs. However, I am a bit smitten by the enthusiasm with which Clark takes to the…er, instrument.]

It’s this dedication to the roots of the country genre that keeps me coming back to Clark. Admittedly, though, I’ve been a fair-weather fan at best for several years. I continued to purchase her new releases but found them decidedly less and less consistent. True, every album has included several songs that were enjoyable, but not since the double-whammy of How I Feel and Fearless, the albums that respectively pulled me in and locked me down as a lifelong fan, had I felt holistically happy with her new offerings. I didn’t even bother to buy her 2009 release, The Long Way Home (although I do remember wishing for a title mashup of this with the Dixie Chicks’ last studio album, Taking the Long Way). I wasn’t really feeling much love for music in general at that point in my life and I think Clark was merely one of many of my favorite artists who didn’t get much Loba Lovin’ at that time.

That is, until her latest release. I purchased and downloaded Roots and Wings from Amazon on Friday afternoon, and I have listened to it every day since. I’m listening to it right now as I write this review, in fact.

Oh, this is a good one, denizens. Everything that I have always loved about Clark is there, from start to finish: catchy country hooks, clever lyrics that are playful and poignant and all stops in between, and gorgeous vocals that slip from roadhouse to lullaby with enviable ease.

In fact, I’m going to have to give the paw of approval to every song on this album. Clark kicks things off with “Wrecking Ball,” which hasn’t failed yet to get my feet tapping and me laughing with each listen (“Woman on a mission / Pure demolition”), and continues along at a solid pace as she slams out of the park common country tropes with grace, joy, and beauty. No, if you play a Clark song backward, you’re not going to get back your house, your truck, your wife, and your dog…but play them forward and you’ll get a glimpse of the greatness that honest country music has to offer.

I don’t know if I can even narrow down this collection of songs to one or two favorites, but if I had to select ones to praise above others, I’d go with “The One” for capturing so wonderfully the essence of what everyone wants to find at least once in this lifetime, “Beautiful and Broken” for its reserved elegance, and “Lonesome’s Last Call” for the respectful way it tips its 10-gallon hat, in sound and sentiment, to old school country.

Even the final two new songs on this album, “We’re Here For a Good Time” and “Flowers in the Snow,” have redeemable qualities even though I feel that they strike a slightly discordant tone in comparison with the rest of the album. “Good Time” is actually a pretty good song, with a happy-go-lucky sound reminiscent of a Margaritaville standard, but there’s something overly processed about the track that seems a little whiffy of auto-tuning. I hate auto-tuning. Unless it’s this. And I think “Flowers in the Snow” suffers only because it comes right on the peppier heels of “Good Time” and ends the new songlist on a decidedly somber note. However, on its own, it’s another classic example of Clark’s ability to write/co-write songs that honor the true sound of country music.

Then there is “Smile.”

This is actually the reason that I bought Roots and Wings. Clark wrote “Smile” in honor of her mother, who died in April 2010 after a 3-year battle with cancer. I’m still trying to sort through the flotsam of emotions that my own mom’s death (barely more than a month after Clark’s loss) has stirred up, but I have discovered that there is an undeniable solace to be found in the words of tribute and love penned by someone who knows first-hand how it feels to lose someone to the unfairness of disease. In fact, I think only “Always,” written and performed with heart-mending beauty by my friend Craig Bevan, has provided me with more comfort than this song has given me, even in the short time since I first heard it.

Of all the things that Clark has a right to be proud of from her career, I hope she knows what a gift she has given her listeners with this particular song.

So there you go, denizens. If you enjoy country music at all, give Roots and Wings a chance. I think you might be pleasantly surprised.

Photo from Terri Clark’s Flickr Stream.

So maybe you’ve seen this before in…other places. Maybe you haven’t. I guess it all depends on where you beam into on teh Interwebz.

Just in case you missed it though, here is a music video from the always delightful Suzie Plakson, she of many Trek aliases and many more talents:

Check out the red sneakers! And once you’re finished, check out your very own copy of her CD, DidnWannaDoIt!

I do loves me some Suzie, that’s for sure. Whether it’s from her many Trek appearances or her roles in other favorites like Wag the Dog or Mad About You (which also featured another of my favorite Titian-Tressed Trek Talents [dear prophets, I love alliteration]), she is always delightful. There’s something so very vintage Hollywood classy about her.

Of course, the ears hanging in my stairwell probably make me a bit biased…but you all still trust my opinion in this matter, right? Right

Indulge me in a moment, will you, denizens?

(As if you don’t do that all the time already…)

So you remember on Star Trek: The Next Generation, when Captain Picard would get up from his command chair and walk toward the viewscreen when he was confronting the person with whom he was exchanging terse Federation-sanctioned “don’t make me kick your alien ass across this quadrant” words? He’d usually come to a stop somewhere in between the command center and the Ops and Conn positions and, if a show of might was necessary, he’d turn around and look up to Lieutenant Worf, right? Right.

Imagine, in this scenario that I was Captain Picard and the Court Yard Hounds were Worf. A much more attractive, better-coifed, far less addicted to prune juice version, of course. That’s how close I was to Emily and Martie last night.

Wait for it…wait…

SQUEE!!!!

I don’t get giddy girl apoplectic over music that often anymore. In fact, there’s only a handful of musicians I like enough to want to actually see live. The Dixie Chicks have always been very high on that list. I know, I said once upon a time that I was through with country music. But the Dixie Chicks are just…the Dixie Chicks. Somehow, they succeeded in transcending the jingoistic hurdle that country music became for me. They’re passionate, opinionated, and talented. Plus, they’re just so darned cute.

But this isn’t a post about the Dixie Chicks! It’s about releasing the Hounds last night. Actually, I’ve talked about the Court Yard Hounds before. Apparently, Natalie Maines still isn’t ready to return to the Chicks, so sisters Emily and Martie continue to make a go of it on their own. Last night, they rolled into town and took over the 6th and I Synagogue. Yep, that’s right: Bluegrass on a Bimah. You really haven’t lived until you’ve experienced such an event.

After listening to their debut CD many times and seeing them live twice now, I have to say I really do love the Court Yard Hounds. They give off a progressive adult vibe that’s flavored generously with country spice and bluegrass zing. Emily’s voice is surprisingly strong and (to me, at least) sounds almost identical to Sheryl Crow at times. That’s never a bad comparison, in my book. Last night, we also were treated to hearing Martie take the lead on a few songs. Here’s photo proof of that:

Martie has an equally lovely voice, but she didn’t seem as comfortable with taking the vocal lead as Emily does. However, when you can play the fiddle like she can, you’re okay without singing. More than okay. In fact, one of my favorite shots from last night is this one of Martie playing her fiddle:

It’s a little too blurry for my liking (it was difficult getting good shots without using my flash, which I didn’t want to do; nothing says “I love your music!” quite like blinding the musicians on stage, right?), but really the blurriness kind of adds to the frenetic aesthetic of her fiddle and bow when she’s in the zone. And look at that Cheshire Cat grin she’s got! Actually, Emily got almost the same look on her face whenever she was in her “Banjo Zone”:

Must be something about those Bluegrass Girls that we city folk just don’t understand. Whatever it is, though, I’m addicted.

There’s a new meme that’s circulating through teh Interwebz. I’m not going to link to it or tell you anything more about it than it’s a parody song written as a “tribute” to a very famous science fiction author. All it really is, though, is someone being crude for the sake of being crude, in this wolf’s humble, whiny opinion. Yet another example of someone wasting their talent just for the shallow shock value of it all.

Needless to say, viewing this inferior meme has made me want to combat it with something far more pleasing. Something like this video for Oren Lavie’s song “Her Morning Elegance.” This is what clever, creative, and classy looks like. Hope you enjoy!

A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile…

Well, sort of. It hasn’t been quite that long since music made me smile. I actually really enjoy music. It’s the concert experience that doesn’t make me smile all that much anymore. I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but at some point concerts became little more than soulless money sucks.

Actually, I do know when it happened, at least for me: Madonna’s Drowned World Tour back in 2001. What a dismal first (and only) Madonna concert! Plunging a clogged toilet is a more satisfying (and interactive) experience than this concert was.

But there are still lots of musicians on tour who put on exemplary concerts. For example, regardless of what you think of her or her music, Tori Amos is always going to be worth the price of admission. She is bizarre in the most wonderful ways, and her playlists always include music from her entire career, even sometimes going all the way back to her Y Kant Tori Read days.

And then there’s Sarah McLachlan, possibly one of the loveliest music imports that Canada has been kind enough to share with us. Her voice is beautiful, her smile is enchanting, and her concerts are always a joy to attend. It’s been a while since McLachlan was at the top of the popular music game, but she continues to release new music and continues to be involved in the music scene.

[She also continues to make Loba feel guilty on a regular basis with those soul-crushingly sad ASPCA commercials that make Loba want to run out to the nearest shelter and adopt EVERYTHING THERE. Seriously, I'm not allowed to watch these commercials anymore, because by the end, I'm looking for my car keys while sob-singing along with "Angel."]

McLachlan is also the driving force behind Lilith Fair. Quick history herstory of this event: Back in 1996, when McLachlan was literally everywhere, she decided that it was ridiculous and completely misogynistic that concert promoters refused to place more than one female artist on a ticket at a time. The boys were being allowed to play together at venues like Lolapalooza…why couldn’t the girls be allowed to do the same thing?

So that summer, she paired up with equally hot-at-the-time musician Paula Cole (who has apparently gone the way of those mysterious cowboys she was looking for back then) as well as a few other female artists, and they all played several venues together around Canada and, I think, the United States.

These concerts were enough of a success to prove to McLachlan’s promoters at Nettwerk that there might actually be something to this all-girl line-up thing after all. So they teamed up with some marketing folk in New York and Lilith Fair was born.

[Loba Fun Fact: No, the concert is not named after Frasier's ex-wife. Lilith is believed by some religious sects to have been Adam's first wife, who subsequently left Adam after hearing too many times, "Baby, bring me a beer...and what's for dinner? I'm starving!" Of course, she is demonized by the patriarchal religious texts in which she does appear. Then again, so is Eve...]

The original Lilith Fair played every summer from 1997 through 1999, and it was amazing. Almost every active female performer from the music world, big names and small alike, wanted to be a part of this annual event: McLachlan (of course), Sheryl Crow, Paula Cole, Jewel, Fiona Apple, Joan Osborne, Queen Latifah, Lisa Loeb, the Dixie Chicks, Shawn Colvin, Missy Elliott, Bonnie Raitt, the Pretenders, Mary Chapin Carpenter, the Indigo Girls, Meredith Brooks, Natalie Merchant, Erykah Badu, Luscious Jackson, Liz Phair, Juliana Hatfield, Nelly Furtado…the list just went on and on. If you want to see all the performers, check out the Wikipedia page on Lilith Fair.

I only went to the 1999 Lilith Fair, but I remember having a hella great time. The concert started in the early afternoon and didn’t wind down until around midnight. We had lawn seats, which were perfectly priced for recent college graduates treading the waters of a final summer of freedom before diving into the deep, dark waters of “Big Girl” employment. Of course, one cannot enjoy an outdoor concert unless it rains…and it poured for most of that afternoon. I think it took almost an entire week for my sneakers to finally dry after that day!

I also remember that the line-up was amazing. It was my first time seeing several of the singers I loved: Sarah, the Dixie Chicks, Sheryl Crow…of course, I did have to suffer through the Indigo Girls, but it was worth it.

[Yeah, I hate the Indigo Girls. Deal with it.]

It was a great day, a great concert, and a great experience, getting to see an entire venue packed with all variety of concertgoers from all ethnicities, genders, religions, sexualities, socioeconomic status, etc., gathered together by a commonly shared love of really awesome music. I’ve heard lots of disparaging comments about Lilith Fair throughout the years, especially when it was at its most popular, but you know what? It was epic in many ways, least of which in how it was able to bring together so many disparate people without conflict, at least for the duration of the day of performances.

Another thing that was great about that 1999 event? I won this:

This is a Takamine electric acoustic guitar, black finish with mother-of-pearl trim. It was supposedly played by Sarah McLachlan at one of the Lilith Fair stops. She then signed the guitar, as you can see in the photo, and donated it to some upstart Dot Com whose name I can’t even remember now, as one of the prizes for their “Sweet Sounds of Summer” contest (yes, I can remember the name of the contest, but I can’t remember the name of the company).

Honestly? I entered the contest because I wanted a signed copy of Sheryl Crow’s newest CD. I had no delusions of actually winning anything, however, let alone the first prize. I feel a little guilty that this beautiful guitar is stuck with unmusical me, sitting in its pretty case for the past decade…brought out only when people want to see it or when I want to photograph it for geeky reasons. Then again, would a musically inclined person actually play this guitar if they owned it? I think not. So I don’t feel that guilty. Plus, one day this puppy is going to be worth a fortune, and I’m going to sell it and buy Rhode Island and turn it into my own geek Utopia. And I shall rule with fairness and geekiness. And Beverly Crusher will be our queen.

…

Fast forward 11 years to the summer of 2010. McLachlan’s first new studio album release in seven years, Laws of Illusion, came out in June of this year. She was coming out of a divorce, primed with new music, and ready to jump back into the musical deep…so what better way than to revive Lilith Fair?

To be honest, the 2010 Lilith Fair was a pale comparison to its earlier iterations. The list of names was much shorter, several of the “big names” dropped out for various reasons, and in the end, ticket sales were poor enough that several of the scheduled events were canceled.

That being said, we went to the D.C. Lilith Fair this past Tuesday, and it was a mostly enjoyable time. The heat made everything a little wilty, but it’s been that way all summer, so nothing we haven’t been dealing with already. I did feel a little over-saturated by all the marketing this time: Chevrolet wanted me to win one of their cars, and Luna wanted to give me their super-sweet energy bars, and Degree wanted me to wear their deodorant and their body mist, and Style magazine wanted me to know how much they love Lilith Fair, and prophets know I now have enough free feminine care products to carry me through to menopause.

Then there was the line-up. You know the adage, “If it’s too loud, you’re too old”? I think that could also be changed to “If it’s too unknown, you’re too old.” I barely knew any of the secondary stage acts. Corrin who? Missy what? Nneka? Butterfly? Is that really your name?

[Okay, I actually did know who Butterfly Boucher was, but that's because she toured with McLachlan back in 2005. She's pretty cool and I really like saying her name. Butterfly Boucher (prononuced like "Bau-chər"). Say it. Out loud. NOW.]

I guess that’s the point, though: to introduce us to these new and rising singers, and several were very enjoyable…but a lot of them started to sound alike after a while. And that was when I knew I was too old. That and when I caught myself saying of Ke$ha, “I’m actually okay with her not being at this Lilith Fair. She looks like you’d need a dose of penicillin after seeing her in concert.”

Ouch.

Of course, the main stage was the big draw of the day anyway. And “Big Girl” employment means no more lawn seats. We traded in our soggy sneakers and picnic blankets for six rows away from the stage. Mmm. Favorite non-Sarah act? The Court Yard Hounds, which is basically the Dixie Chicks minus Natalie Maines. Sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire decided that they were ready to go back to recording, but Maines was still enjoying her time out of the limelight. So the sisters formed the Court Yard Hounds, with the promise of returning to the Dixie Chicks once Maines is ready to go.

I’ve always loved Emily and Martie. Last time I saw the Dixie Chicks in concert, I wrote this of their instrumental prowess:

Emily is to a banjo like Hendrix lighting guitars and Martie could beat the Devil and Johnny both down in Georgia any time on her fiddle.

That’s one of the reasons I did love country music for so long: I love the bluegrassy frenzy of banjo and fiddle. I can’t explain it. I just like it. Plus, look at how country awesome they look!

Needless to say, their performance at Lilith Fair convinced me to buy their CD, so apparently I am quite susceptible to marketing. And my love of country music is apparently returning.

Oh, and of course, McLachlan was delightful as the final act to what had become the final stop of Lilith Fair 2010 (thanks to those unfortunate cancellations I previously mentioned). She seemed hopeful that Lilith Fair would return for another go next summer. I don’t know if that’s actually in the cards or if it was just wishful hoping, but I’m glad I had the chance to visit once more with Lilith and rekindle some happy memories from my college days.

Still howling happily about Craig Bevan’s debut CD, I Think We’ve Made It. Missed my last musing on the subject? Here you go.

Better yet, here. This is the first official video, for the CD’s title song. It’s brilliantly directed by Tristan Ofield. Watch it, love the song, buy the CD or the music download. It’s that simple.

I don’t often review movies here at the lair beyond what I’ve been reviewing through my DVDregs project (which I haven’t forgotten about; I just prefer to spend more time reading books than watching movies). I also find that most movies that come down the Hollywood pipeline are such disappointments that I anticipate very little from the movie world anymore.

I was, however, greatly anticipating The Runaways. I’ve been a HUGE Joan Jett fan since I first heard the opening percussion and guitars of “I Hate Myself for Loving You.” And when that gorgeous, gravelly, smoke-saturated voice kicked in, my little Blackheart belonged to her. She is one of the original rocker grrls who still wails like nobody’s business, even at one notch past the half-century mark.

I didn’t learn about her early roots until much later (thank you, Interwebz!), but when I did discover The Runaways, I had another squee attack. This is the band that started the careers of Joan Jett AND Lita Ford?! Close my eyes forever, indeed.

So I began paying more attention to the cinema chat swirling around this one, and that’s when I stumbled upon the teaser poster for this movie.

What a big hot mess of sexual innuendo!

Let’s start with the tagline: “It’s 1975 and they’re about to explode.”

Okay, this could be interpreted in non-sexual ways, especially if you assume that people viewing this poster know who The Runaways were in the music world and subsequently look at this statement from a purely musical standpoint. 1975 was a year filled with some…interesting chart-topping musicians: Captain and Tenille. Glen Campbell. John Denver. K.C. & the Sunshine Band. Barry Manilow. The Carpenters. The Bee Gees. Melissa Manchester.

1975 was basically an easy listening station’s wet dream. But something was brewing under the surface on both sides of the Atlantic…something awesome and raucous and loud. The punk rock scene hit huge in ’75, with the appearance of groups like the Sex Pistols, Blondie, and the Ramones. I won’t try to ramble on anymore about punk rock since I have already pointed out that music knowledge is not one of my strong points (I only knew about these three groups because I like their music).

However, just this little bit of knowledge gives credence to the tagline’s statement that “It’s 1975 and they’re about to explode.” The Runaways were most assuredly nothing like The Carpenters. Their different-from-mainstream sound was ready to explode onto the scene and take that filthy muskrat love hostage. Plus, their arrival on the music scene meant the arrival of the girls to the predominantly boys’ club of hard rock.

Then we get to the poster’s solitary graphic: a ripe, red, luscious, dripping cherry with a lit fuse for a stem.

Again, let’s assume some Runaways knowledge. Probably their biggest hit was the song “Cherry Bomb.” It not only shows up on every Runaways compilation out there, but Jett has included her renditions on both her greatest hit CDs. So here we have the visual representation of the proverbial cherry bomb, made even more prominent by the black background.

[Loba Tangent: I love how this bright red image against the black background is so evocative of the poster for that 1975 movie cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.]

[Loba Post-Posting Tangent: I just realized, after looking at the poster on a monitor with a brighter contrast than the monitor I was previously on that the black background has the overlay of a record (you know, those crazy huge discs that artists now melt and sculpt into bowls?) ghosted into it. Nice touch!]

Then you get the names of the two principal actors, Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, in a simple white sans serif, hovering above a roughly spray-painted and smudged stencil of the movie title, in matching cherry red paint. It’s amateurish but bold, which are definitely two things that could be applied to the early days of this band.

Of course, if we remove the assumption that people looking at this poster have any idea of who The Runaways were or what they meant to the music world, this poster drips with sexual innuendo (literally!), just like I originally said. Then again, with lyrics like “I’ll give ya something to live for! Have ya, grab ya til you’re sore!” there’s very little room for interpretation here. The Runaways were fiercely sexual, often referred to as “Jail Bait Rock” for obvious reasons: They were all in their teens or barely 20, with original lead singer Cherie Curie only 15 when she joined the band. Gives that “ready to explode” cherry a whole different connotation there, eh?

Sex sells, and this poster definitely sells the sexuality of this movie and this group.

Bonus Movie Review

I’ve already said a lot about the group The Runaways with my poster review. So what about the movie? I cringe a little at calling this movie a proper biopic of the entire group. It really isn’t.

The screenplay is based upon Cherie Curie’s Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway. Curie was only with the band from 1975-77, so obviously basing the script on her recollections isn’t going to give the full story. Also, it’s her memoir so it’s told from her perspective with her take on what was happening. Jett was tapped to provide additional information, to help flesh out the story (which is only appropriate since Jett was the group’s founding member with drummer Sandy West, who died in 2006 of lung cancer).

That being said, obviously the focus of this movie was Curie, with Jett playing a substantial secondary role. I was actually very surprised by this, for two reasons. One, Joan Jett is the most successful musician to come from the original line-up and she was a co-founder, so you’d think she’d be more of the focus. Two, look at the teaser poster: Kristen Stewart received billing ahead of Dakota Fanning. I took this as an indication that her role would be more substantial. I guess it really was a matter of box office pull. Stewart is the bigger name thanks to those shitty twinkly vampire movies the Twilight franchise.

I’ve never read Curie’s memoir but I can only assume that it’s a bit of a weak read based on the overall weakness of this movie’s screenplay. There’s an absence of cohesion throughout the storytelling. Also, the band members who aren’t Curie or Jett get supremely shafted in screen time as well as character development. Case in point: The biggest scene for Lita Ford is brief and tantamount to a hissy fit. Regardless of whether or not this was an accurate portrayal or just how Curie remembered this particular moment, it makes Ford one-dimensional and rather unsympathetic. Again, though, since this is from Curie’s perspective, maybe that was the ultimate goal.

Negatives of the screenplay aside, this movie’s strength resides in those two names on the poster. I still find Dakota Fanning unnerving. She’s literally the oldest young person I’ve ever seen. However, she brings a fierceness and energy to her portrayal of Cherie Curie that is incendiary. Her transformation from mousy waif from a broken home to corseted, drug-addled prima donna jail bait was almost completely believable (hindered only by the obvious and unchangeable truth that Fanning isn’t all these things, so it’s really all pretend in the end).

As for Stewart’s performance as Joan Jett? This is the kind of acting I want to see more of from Stewart. She has an ability to completely immerse herself into a role to spectacular effect. For this movie, Stewart was Joan Jett, right down to the burgeoning of those amazing sexy-growly vocals that are synonymous with Jett’s solo career.

Jett herself is on record as stating that the first time she listened to a recording of Stewart singing one of the movie’s songs, she thought the producers had made a mistake and sent her a recording of herself from those days. Whether this is movie hype hyperbole or not, both Stewart and Fanning nailed their musical impersonations, making their contributions to the movie’s soundtrack excellent additions.

Yes, I have the soundtrack already. It’s actually quite good, a substantial mix of movie Runaways and real Runaways music interspersed with songs from other punk/rock scions like Suzi Quatro (Leather Tuscadero!!), The Stooges, Sex Pistols, MC5, and David Bowie.

Regardless of screenplay flaws, this is one raucous, vulgar, in-your-face, wild ride into the true essence of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” and the brakes are out and there’s no stopping until the cliff appears ahead and we all go plummeting to our rock goddess deaths. But we’ll be so hopped up on whatever pills and booze we can get our hands on, we just won’t care.

I think the only thing that I would have loved to see more of was toward the end, when Jett began to be the dominant character and we started seeing her metamorphosis into the soon-to-be Jett of Blackhearts fame. And when Stewart appeared toward the movie’s end, wearing that fuchsia blazer with the hyper-huge shoulder pads? I squeed a little. And immediately pictured this in my mind:

I love rock-n-roll, too, Joan. Oh, yes, I do.

Of course, we don’t need a biopic on Jett. We know what happened with her post-Runaways. But I wouldn’t complain if Stewart wanted to finally stop hanging out with sparkly vampires and sink her teeth into another Jett-based role. Until then, though, I’ve added The Runaways to my wishlist and am looking forward to firing up the soundtrack for my commute home. Drive me wild…

This is the voice that gods summon to soothe their weary hearts.

Remember when I wrote this, denizens? No? I wrote it not very long ago in reference to the wonderful, talented Mr. Craig Bevan.

I still feel this way about his voice, perhaps even more so now that I am the proud owner of Craig’s debut album, I Think We’ve Made It.

Yes, the time has come, denizens. You know that Loba would never give her support to anyone or anything here at the lair unless I strongly believed in what I was writing. False promises are not how I roll.

I very much believe in Craig…and I don’t say that simply because he is my friend. I believe in him because he exudes talent in so many ways, but especially when he sings. Take a listen and you’ll know this truth: He loves his music, and that love shines through in every chord and every lyric.

So, here’s the deal: Head over to Craig’s site and get the free download that he’s offering there. And when you fall as in love with his voice and music as I have, you can go ahead and buy your own copy straight from his site. You can also follow the Amazon link I have up at the top of this post or you can buy it via iTunes. Whatever way you prefer, I simply hope you buy it. You won’t regret it, and you’ll be supporting a wonderful musician and a really groovy guy.

Second step of Loba’s Grand Bevan Plan? Tell your friends, just like I’m telling you. Send this post to them to read. Tweet them. Retweet them. Write about Craig on your Facebook page (or your MySpace page, if that’s how you still roll). Whatever way you choose, I hope you’ll join me in getting word out about Craig and his amazing debut.