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12-6-02 // 1.10 pm window opened by candlelight NP: Howie Day - "Australia" OK, so I just have to say before I go on that this Howie Day album is one of the best things I've heard in ages. I mean, it's nothing shocking, it's just a guy with a guitar doing singer/songwriter type stuff. Kind of reminded me of John Wesley in his stripped down incarnation. But I dunno, it's something about Day's voice and the quality of the songs that really gets to me. "She Says" is possibly the most heartwrenching song I've heard this year. Plus his live show was really great...he's basically a one man band. He has this array of pedals by his microphone that trigger samplers and sequencers. What he does is to first start out a song with just his voice and acoustic guitar. Then he'll bang out a rhythm by hitting the guitar body, hit a pedal to sample it, and loop it back. He'll do the same with a rhythm guitar melody, and sometimes also play the acoustic like a bass and get a low end going like that. In effect, he builds a song live, on stage. It's very cool to watch, and it sounds incredible, what with about three or four different layers, some reverb effects, and his voice and additional live acoustic guitar over it all. Occasionally he even sampled his voice, playing that back with interesting results. I think at one point, he even got down on his hands and knees and started manipulating the various pedals by hand, sort of looking like one of the guys in Orbital had dropped their contact lens on the ground during a show. All of this raving is a result of the fact that Howie Day was the opening act for Tori Amos the other night. It was an interesting show. Tori played at the Fox Theater, which is this incredibly ornate 1920s era theater downtown. The lobby was packed with people swarming the merchandise stand. Waited for like half an hour for a shirt for Erin. Talked to some cool people while in line. The show itself was a mixed bag. The setlist was strange...the first three songs were very, very strong -- A Sorta Fairytale, Crucify, Bliss, and then after the average Mrs. Jesus, we got another one-two-three punch of Concertina, Your Cloud (a song on "Scarlet's Walk" that didn't stand out much to me, but live was amazing), and Tear in Your Hand (a personal favorite, there). The rest could've been better. For one thing, Tori seemed slightly bored playing things like Past the Mission and Cornflake Girl. There was the inclusion of a lot of the rather boring songs off of "Scarlet's Walk" -- Pancake, Wednesday, Sweet Sangria. I Can't See New York, which is for me, probably the highlight of the new album, fell very flat live. It really needs the studio layering to work properly, if you ask me. However, there were some definite highlights -- Leather (just Tori and the piano), Taxi Ride, and a huge version of Spring Haze. Ended the show with Playboy Mommy, too, which was great. Sad to see an overall lack of "From the Choirgirl Hotel" (my favorite Tori album) material, though. (just one song and a b-side, Cooling, which I don't care for that much). The crowd was very strange, too. They sat throughout the entire show, not to mention that they were extremely quiet. Not much moving around or singing along, etc. I dunno, it was kind of creepy. I wasn't expecting a mosh pit, but I expected a more passionate crowd, considering what an intense following Tori has. Anyway, yeah. Overall, it was a good show, but not great. I dunno, I'd like to see her again sometime to figure out if her shows are always like that, or if this one was an aberration. I think in general, Erin was even less impressed than I was. Today is Friday, for which I am very grateful. I've managed to finish up my unit testing (writing the plan and actually executing the tests) already today, for which I'm rather proud of myself. Everything even checks out, which is even better, considering I don't have to go mess around with the code some more. Looking forward to leaving work in about three and a half hours, coming home, drinking a few beers, and being with Erin. Going to see my aunt, uncle, and cousin Sam tomorrow afternoon, then Ryan is taking us out to dinner. Should be a great weekend. Later gators.
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