sarah mclachlan live

[woj@remus.rutgers.edu]

i got back a few hours ago from seeing sarah mclachlan perform her next
to last show on the solace tour. and i'm no longer mad at her...

rewind to last weekend. greg, jessica, meredith, myself and a few other
gaffa lurkers converged on northampton, masschusetts where we met with
bob krovetz. our intention: to see sarah at the iron horse. when we got
there, we discovered that sarah had cancelled the show. the reason: the
stage was too small. after talking to the owner for a bit, we were quite
miffed as he told us that the show was cancelled around 4pm that after-
noon - much too late for us to do anything about it. the opening act, 
a band called balloon, would still be playing for free, but we decided
to find some other place to eat dinner. after bumbling around noho for
a while, we all went our separate ways.

monday afternoon at work, i got a call from jessica. turns out that sarah
was playing a show on the coming friday (yesterday that is) at club bene
in sayreville, new jersey (much closer to all of us than noho). so we
made our reservations and relished the possibility to talk to sarah and
nag her about cancelling the show the weekend before (we had already
made plans to write a letter).

well, after last night's show, i couldn't be mad at her anymore. first off,
somehow, despite the fact that we made very late reservations, we were
seated *right* in front of the stage. in fact, my neck is all crannied up
from staring up at her and the rest of the band. second, once they got
into a groove, the show was fantastic. the set list was fairly similar to
the ones that others have posted (such as the charles playhouse show which
was simulcast on wfnx earleir this year). notable differences include the
addition of a new song called "elsewhere" - described by sarah as a song
about being dysfunctional, which was a fairly nice rocker in the folky
rock direction that _solace_ is headed. unfortunately, the violin was not
featured as it was in the early shows on the tour. two songs on the printed
set list were not played: "mercy" and "ben's song". but the final part of
the set and the encore were so powerfully performed off that i'm not *too*
disappointed regarding the lack of those two songs.

afterwards, we talked a bit to the crew and some of the band. naturally,
we mentioned the cancelled noho show and were informed that the show had,
in fact, been cancelled some weeks earlier by sarah due to a lack of stage
space and a lack of power - there was a total of three (3!) regular outlets
for use by the crew. and after seeing the stage setup, i can agree that 
three would not have been enough. apparantly, the iron horse was hoping
that sarah would decide to do an acoustic set. in addition, announcing
the show as cancelled would certainly have hurt their attendance for that
night as well - and being a dining hall, they probably figured that the
people who did come out would stick around for food. now i'm glad that we
didn't...

i must also add that listening to a dub of that charles playhouse show
is *no* substitute for seeing her live. from that tape, i had gotten the
impression that she was shallow and goofy. nope. her performance was dy-
namic, honest and impressive. i might not like _solace_ as much as i like 
_touch_, but live, she still is very good.

oh...we talked to the person selling the shirts and stuff (there were 
also postcards and a beautiful program) and she informed us that the
toronto performance of last week was recorded and selections from that
recording will be released soon on an ep. there will be a limited edition
of the ep available as well which will include a smaller version of the 
tour program as the jewel booklet. look for it...

time for bed...

woj