Tori Amos and E

[relph@presto.ig.com (John M. Relph)]

Last Wednesday I had the pleasure of attending the Tori Amos concert in
San Francisco.  The concert was held at the Palace of Fine Arts, a very
nice little place, where every seat is good.  There were actually two
shows, and I attended the early show.

Opening for Tori Amos was E, whose debut album is entitled _A Man Called
(E)_.  'E was great!  'E played about half of the songs from his album,
with only a guitarist, Parthenon Huxley, who also produced the album,
and a bassist as backup.  They opened with "Hello Cruel World", and also
played "Mockingbird Franklin", others from the album, and a new song
called "L.A. River".  They also covered "I'm Only Sleeping", complete
with the "backwards guitar", which was actually Mr Huxley singing, and
"Freebird", which at one point featured lighters held to the sky.  Quite
humorous, and a nice relaxed fun performance.

After their great and unassuming set, I went out to the lobby and
procured E's and Mr Huxley's autographs, as well as accidentally being
handed a promo cassette for the album.  Oops!  Then the lights flashed
and I reclaimed my seat for Ms Amos' performance.

She came out and immediately started playing, sticking a bit of "Twinkle
Little Star" into the introduction of the first song.  She also
immediately started writhing about the piano, kicking her right leg
about and arching her head back.  Very Melodramatic.  In fact, it took
about three songs before I could really get into her performance, due to
all the posing.  But she is a very good pianist and quite a powerful
singer, as well as writing good songs.  (I enjoy her album very much.) 
After about the third song the show was very good indeed, including her
comments before the songs.  My fiancee remarked that she didn't know if
she would want to know such an intense person!  Ms Amos played a number
of songs from her "debut" album, a Led Zeppelin medley including "Whole
Lotta Love" and "Thank You", and a couple of songs I didn't recognize. 
She came back for two encores.  At the start of the first encore a
person from the crowd gave Ms Amos a Very Large bouquet of flowers.  She
immediately poured the entire contents of her bottle of mineral water
onto the bouquet, saying that she had cases of the stuff backstage. 
During the second encore she played the now-familiar "Smells Like Teen
Spirit".  But by the second encore all her posing and thrashing about
seemed again like a pose, and I just wanted the concert to end.  Which
it did.

I definitely enjoyed E better.

	-- John