Sinead O'Connor Live!

[Doug Alan <nessus@athena.mit.edu>]

I just saw Sinead O'Connor on Friday night at Axis, and it was indeed
quite the experience!  All three Boston gigs had sold out in a flash,
and I didn't have tickets for the Axis show, so I brought some cash
hoping to purchase a scalped ticket.  I figured I'd have to spend $30,
so I wasn't quite prepared for the $75 that scalpers were asking.  The
scalpers refused to accept my $50 counteroffer, but some guy with an
extra ticket overheard my conversation with a scalper and sold me his
extra ticket for $50.

I arrived early so that I could position myself close to the stage.  I
only had to stand squooshed in the croud for an hour and forty five
minutes before the band went on, so it wasn't too bad.  It was worth
it be only a few feet from Sinead.  As an extra bonus I got to see all
of *Faces of Death Part Two*!  Actually, I don't know just what it
was, but on the video monitors during the wait, Axis was showing all
sorts of footage of various disasters.  I'm told that originally The
Heretics were going to open, but Sinead demanded the club get a rap
band instead.  Apparently, the management of Axis was unable to find a
rap band in Boston, so intead I got to see the Hindenburg explode and
the Titanic sink.  There was a whole twenty minutes devoted to a
high-rise appartment building that burnt down.  People were jumping
out of the building and flailing their arms as they fell, only to
splatter on the pavement a moment later.  Some people tried to climb
down unsuccessfully.  All of them eventually fell and spattered on the
pavement.  Many of them hit and bounced off of one or more balconies
on the way down.  At one climactic moment, a group of firemen on the
end of a long ladder were just about to rescue someone who was
dangling from a ledge.  Unfortunately, the dangling person lost their
grip and fell to their spalttery death many floors below.  Not only
that, but when the person fell, they bounced down the ladder and
knocked off all of the firemen, who also fell to splatter on the
pavement.

Eventually I had to tear my eyes from the monitor, however, because
the band was going on stage.  I was a bit worried as the band walked
on the stage.  I was almost expecting to be disappointed.  Sinead's
album is a finely produced item, and I wasn't too sure if she could
pull it off live, but as the first notes of "Jackie' came out of
Sinead's throat, I knew the show was going to be great.  It was a
relatively short show -- sligtly less than an hour.  In that hour, the
band performed all of *The Lion and Cobra* except for "Drink Before
the War" and they performed three other songs not on the album.  I am
led to believe that one of the three songs was a Smiths tune.

I'm told that two ex-members of The Smiths have moved up in the world
and are now touring with Sinead.  In any case, the band was flawless,
and nearly every song sounded just like on the album.  In fact,
perhaps the worst thing you can say about the concert is that
everything sounded exactly like on the album.  The only songs that
sounded significantly different were "I Want Your (Hands on Me)",
which sounded somewhat different with real drums rather than a drum
machine, and "Troy", which Sinead did as her only encore, singing it
solo with only her own guitar as accompiament.  The only other flaw of
the concert was Sinead's guitar playing.  She struggles to strum
simple six-string open chords and attempts nothing more difficult.
Fortunately, she only played on two song, "Just Call Me Joe" and
"Troy".  She admitted her guitar playing deficiencies when she said
before "Troy" that we were going to hear it how it had been originally
written -- to be be played on a badly played guitar.

Sinead's lack of guitar playing ability is only really a footnote,
however, since her vocal chords can fully carry any song.  Her vocal
performance was phenomenal!  Every note, scream, and sound on the
album sounded just as good live, and it was fun to watch the veins on
her bare forehead bulge during the vocal accrobatics that required
extra lung-power.

Sinead was quite an interesting character.  She has a quaint Irish
accent, and often when she would introduce a song, she would put on a
feined Scottish accent, which of course, to American ears sounds only
slightly thicker.  At one point in the concert, she looked like she
was going to slug a guy in the front row who was talking loudly during
a quiet acapella moment.  But at other times, when the audience would
cheer wildly in adulation, her face would acquire the cutest, most
sincere grin.

In contrast to her shy nature she exhibited when interviewed by
Empty-V, on stage she isn't all that coy.  It was hot in Axis, and
after the first song, she took off her shirt, and performed the rest
of the night in her black lace brazier.  She also had some pretty
risque lyrics.  In one song  she sang:

	Like the time we fucked so hard
	There was blood on the walls

In another song she demanded:

	Stick your tongue down my throat
	Stick your tongue down my throat
	Stick your tongue up my hole
	Stick your tongue up my hole

All in all it was a great show, filled with many fine moments such as
the above.  It may have been the most expensive 45 minutes of my life,
but 45 minutes at the psychiatrist would cost even more, and I'm sure
this did more to keep me sane.  Unfortunately, I cannot concur with
Mr. Earle, who says that yuppies would flock to see Sinead O'Connor.
I just cannot see your typical yuppie enjoying seeing a bald woman
dressed in a bra and miniskirt scream about cunilingus and sex during
menstration.  Perhaps I just haven't kept up enough with the yuppie
scene.  Perhaps it's time to become a yuppie....

After the gig, I met a dude who befriended me because I had been up at
the front the whole time, while he had been stranded at the rear.  He
asked me if I wanted to join him and some of his friends for a beer at
a bar nearby, I said okay.  He wanted to go to the bathroom first, and
twenty minutes later he hadn't returned and I was getting impatient.
The most beautiful girl I had ever seen walked toward me and looked
right at me.  She had long blonde hair and looked like she was right
out a B-grade beach movie where all the girls are blonde and lose
their bikini tops eventually for one reason or another, or right out
of a shampoo commercial.  She stared right at me.  I smiled back.  She
walked closer and closer, and then right up to me.  She reached out to
touch me.  And then pushed me away to get a better view of the poster
I was standing in front of.  It said "THE CURE IN ORANGE A FICTION
MOVIE".

She said, "Right.  Like I could have thought The Cure would possibly
play here!"

Trying not to look crushed, I said, "Yeah, and what's 'a fiction film'
anyway?   Does that mean it stars people pretending to be The Cure?"

The chick said, "Yeah, right" and then walked off with this guy who
looked like a linebacker.

I decided it was time to split, and even though I now knew that no
woman who looks like one of those blonde girls in a B-grade beach
movie who lose their bikini tops eventually for one reason or another,
or like a woman in a shampoo commercial, would ever be attracted to
me, it didn't matter, for I had the music of Sinead O'Connor deep
within me -- deep within my internal organs.

Leben heikt leben,

|>oug /\lan