tori in houston

[Dick Locke <wiltel!dlocke@uunet.UU.NET>]

My wife and I saw Tori at the Tower Theater in Houston this past
Saturday. Great Show!  I'll describe a bit about the show and then
get into my personal feelings about it later...  If Anil reads
carefully, he can probably derive some stuff to ask Tori about!

The Tower Theater has an elevated stage and kind of a staircased set of aisles,
(running parallel to the stage) each aisle having tables and chairs on either
side with space to walk in the middle.  We were probably 5 aisles back,
perhaps 50 feet from Tori, exactly at her eye height.  Excellent
seats, and we only arrived about an hour before the show was scheduled
to start.  They were selling some tickets at the door; I don't know
if it ever "sold out".  They sold drinks, which was cool, though
mixed drinks were $4.50 a pop.  They made more on selling us drinks
than on selling us the tickets ;-)  The theatre was quite small,
and I doubt it could hold more than 7 or 8 hundred people; a nice
venue!

Some local guy was the warm-up act.  He was OK; some sort of Elvis
Costello wanna-be.  He had a good voice and if there is ever a market
for Elvis (Costello) impersonators this guy could make a good living.

Tori came on around 9:25, and was greeted quite enthusiastically by
the audience.  She seemed to start into either "Song for
Eric" or else just some stuff to test the sound.  She stopped right
away and said "So, are we going to fix this?  Is that on?  Ian?  Ian
are you there? Ian's my sound man!"  There was some sort of distortion
in the left PA, and I'm not sure the right PA was even on...  Tori
asked for someone in the audience to suggest a favorite Christmas carol to
test the sound as Ian fiddled, and Tori proceeded to sing the first verse
or so!  (I don't know the title of the carol, sorry)  I must say that
the Tori version of the song was great!  She sang some of it in the upper
register (sounding quite unconventional), and then stopped to explain she
had to do that to test out the sound.  The audience loved it.  Maybe Anil
can suggest she do a CD of Xmas songs in his interview!

She started out with Leather, Crucify, and Silent All These Years if
memory serves, and she seemed to play everything I've been hearing about
on the mailing list except Angie was omitted.  The last two songs in
the encore were "Song for Eric" and "China",  and my memory isn't good
enough for the middle of the show!  The show lasted until around 11:00.

I don't know how to describe my reaction to Tori's performance except to
say I was deeply moved.  Several songs brought tears to my eyes (and my
wife reports the same.)  I had been concerned that perhaps the by now
famous Tori-isms might somehow be obtrusive, but I found quite the reverse
to be true.  Tori communicates not only with her voice and piano, but also
with her facial expressions, hand movements, and body language.  Her
behind doesn't spend much time plopped onto the piano bench supporting
her weight, because frequently she supports herself more with her
feet as she works up and down the keyboard.  (It looks hard on the knees
to me!)  Her facial expressions are very expressive and help communicate
the song to the audience.  You would certainly loose a lot of you had to
see her from the back of a big venue.

I think one aspect of the show really differs from the standard "pop"
performance, and that's the use of a wide dynamic range.  "Dynamic
range" refers to the difference between the loudest and softest sounds.
Most pop shows/albums show very little dynamic range (and a lot of radio
stations purposefully compress the hell out of their signal to make it
subjectively "loud"), but Tori uses it extensively on her albums and
much more so in the show.  (To be fair, I guess the album producer or
engineer have a fair amount of influence on the dynamic range of a recording.)
I'm sure it's her classical influence, as dynamic contrasts are intrinsic
to classical music.

The volume of her performance was constantly varying; never a monotone.
She virtually whispers some parts while barely striking the keys -- there
were a number of times during the show when the air-conditioning was
audible.  Other times she'd pound the keyboard and let loose with all
she had (and good old Ian at the mixing board would let her go!)  Little
Earthquakes is a great example of a song with great contrasts, it starts
soft, gets big and dramatic and loud, and then finishes gently.  Winter
is also similar; very soft until "His hair is grey..."  (I'm getting
goosebumps as I think about it!)

Anyway, I think this is one of the things that really sets Tori apart
as an artist, and I think it's clearly her classical training showing
itself.  She was great, I hope to see her again!

By the way, the audience was very enthusiastic and polite.  No Ohio State
type of pary crowd here!

-Dick Locke

p.s. What does Tori's voice really sound like?  We don't really know,
do we?  I now know what her voice sounds like through her mic. and
the PA with 200msec (or whatever it was) echo.  There were some times
during the show when I thought the echo was clearly being overdone
(i.e., mixed too loud, I guess).  Does Tori really need the echo to
sound good, or is it just a given in music today that the artist's voice
by itself is inadequate?  What does Tori think?  (Anil: hint, hint!)