Re: Tori--What do you really think?

[chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (chris williams)]

Chris here,

>>>I think that _Little Earthquakes_ is a far more impressive debut than
>>>_The Kick Inside_.

>>Aside from the fact that _Little Earthquakes_ is not her Debut,
>>I'd agree.  I think _LE_ is easily as strong as most of Kate's work.

>You'd rather I'd said "solo debut"?  We'd already established that
>Tori had a previous album.  It's also been mostly ignored by everyone
>including Tori herself.

   To the point of hostility. Our first Tori concert was at a very small
club called Shuba's. This was advertised in the paper, and it was one of
the first one the tour. When we got there, we were told that it was
"sold out." Now, this was rather silly, as Shuba's almost never even
sells *tickets*, let alone sell out. It turned out that the Record
Company had decided to buy all the seats and give them to their special
friends.

   So, we wound up standing in line for a concert that there was a good
chance that we wouldn't even see, in spite of having been the first in
line. 

   Well, one of the items we had brought with us was _Y Kant Tori Read_,
with the intention of getting it signed. We had a bit of fun showing it
to the people from the local offices of the record company, various
record stores and distributors, and coke dealers. Almost every one of
these "industry" folks had no idea that Tori had ever done anything
else. It was interesting to see YKTR as an example of "A&R" (Artist &
Repertory); _LE_ as an example of good A&R, and _YKTR_ as an example
of A&R gone horribly, horribly wrong.

   We did get to see the concert after the squids, in the sprit of 
"nobelse oblegiese" (sp?), decided to let some of the great unwashed
in SRO. Vickie hung out by the mixing board, but I wanted to get as 
close as the squids would let me (Shuba's *never* has "reserved
seating"). So I wound up *kneeling* behind the back row. I'm 6' and
didn't want to block to view of any of the other proletariat.

   After the show Tori hung around signing things, and chatting with
people. Her handlers made sure that the "invited guests" had all been
served their portions of Tori, before any of us party-crashers were
allowed to speak to her. 

   Well anyway, Tori's chief handler (big Bristish guy, balding head
with itty-bitty pony-tail) had heard that we had a copy of the cursed
object with us and specifically asked us _not_ to ask Tori to sign it.

   So, I'm not sure if Tori hates that album, or if we ran into an
example of revisionism in action.

                             Chris Williams of
                                Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
                                   chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu

    "There's pieces of me you've never seen..." Tori

P.S. No, we cannot make copies of YKTR as our copy is warped beyond
     playability.