| Holy shit. Cat Power is good..
So my girlfriend and I went to see her play at the Aladdin on Saturday night. I've been wanting to write some kind of review but haven't had time until now. Cat Power fans will like this, I think. It was great great great!
So there were 2 shows that night, 7:30 and 10:30, we went to the later one. These were both solo shows, she's finished touring with the new band or she's on a break or something?
Anyway, she comes out at 10 something with no shoes on and slides over to her mic and say "wow the first show sucked." She played a couple of seemingly obscure covers from the 50s first. It's been a few days so I'm now a little hazy. But it was great. She was definitely nervous at first. During the first song, there was dumb girl down by the stage with a camera. Ms Marshall kindly says "would you mind waiting till the end? It's kind of distracting with you there, I hope that's okay. Are you mad at me?" So she goes on with the song, that first was actually one of hers but i can't remember what it was now.
She plays some songs, moving back and forth between the piano and guitar. Her voice is really magnifcent live, mmm I think majestic is the word I want to use. A few songs in, she randomly mentioned a cigarette so a few guys ran down to the stage to help out. So she's just hanging out, smoking her cigarette, ashing in the pocket of her flannel shirt. She's talking about when she briefly lived in Portland and where she got her favorite breakfast. She gets into Bob Dylan and how she had a really weird experience seeing him play with a friend in Paris. She was imitating her little french friend and it was fucking cute, I won't go into the story because it wouldn't translate very well through me.
when she was done with her smoke, she played some dylan song that i didn't know. and then she seemed to not know what to play next, and people immediately started shouting requests. OF COURSE, that one asshole yells "freebird man!!" Well Ms. Marshall obliged him on this evening, and actually played her own take on the first verse of Free Bird. She took that right into Satisfaction, and a couple of older songs.
Anyways, she played a lot of the stuff from the new album, and it was okay... I don't know.... eventually everything started feeling too slow for me. I'd really like to see her with her old band, not the new r&b bullshit. But all in all, it was a great show. She became very comfortable and really seemed to have a good time. She eventually had another cigarette and spent a lot of time talking with us all. It was really cool even though it was a big sweaty theater and half the people were there to hear "living proof." And I guess that's a lot better than it could have been, given her history of freak-outs.
You should go see this lady play.
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