Tour has great start

[Cat Fan]

I heard that the first show in Tucson went really well last night and the Memphis Rhythm band, complete with a horn section, evidently started the set with a couple of guitarist Teenie Hodges' favorites from his Hi Records past. It sounded like a fantastic show and I know how fine that band is she has with her on this tour. Everybody go find the show nearest you on the tour schedule! Is there any chance of further shows after the DC and Tennessee ones? There are some cities being missed that have a lot of her fans, including Atlanta and some others I could list. Anyway, I hear the first show was awesome.

[adam]

i just started a thread with some photos posted on a live journal page.

[Cat Fan]

(Below are chan-related excerpts from a NY Times article which I'm including the link to so you can read the whole thing there. A friend sent me the link in email.)


Festival Review
Coachella, an Indie-Rock Festival With Room for Madonna (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/arts/music/02coac.html?ex=1147233600&en=93d33063353f19f4&ei=5070&emc=eta1)


By BEN RATLIFF
Published: May 2, 2006

...

Coachella crowds are leisure mavens used to exercising choice, and they favor small designers, like Junker and NaCo, rather than Nike logos or keepsakes from old rock concerts. But exercising prudent choice is not the same thing as declaring love. Coachella is not a rock festival for communal bliss: it can feel almost like a trade show, filled with informed and fairly dispassionate consumers sampling a band, checking it off a list, moving on.

Often this was a peculiarly tepid response to brilliant shows. Several bands, including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Duke Spirit, Animal Collective, Cat Power and Deerhoof, gave it everything they had, each staging remarkable, potentially career-changing performances. The sense of informed caution was everywhere but onstage.

What is a Coachella band, then? A band that has just reconvened, for one thing, or wants to give a teaser of a forthcoming tour. The original lineup of the Smiths was said to have been courted by the festival but turned down a $5 million offer to reunite. Instead, on Sunday, Tool, a band that hasn't toured in four years, devoted about a quarter of its set to songs from its new album, "10000 Days," with a stage show involving enormous sound and enigmatic, ponderous bad-dream films on the giant video screens. (Its brooding, riff-heavy music upped the festival's low testosterone quotient.)

...

Mr. West used a string section to boost his live sound, and he wasn't alone. Sigur Ros used strings and brass in its dusk-hour set of rock songs fit for cathedrals, hovering for long stretches in the middle ground between crescendo and decrescendo. Gnarls Barkley, a new collaboration between the singer Cee-Lo and the producer Danger Mouse that treads the line between misfit indie-rock and freaky R&B, used samplers, a band and backup singers, with everyone dressed as a character from "The Wizard of Oz." And Chan Marshall performed songs from the new Cat Power album, "The Greatest," with a slick band full of Memphis studio musicians.

For a singer who has conditioned her audiences to shaggy, discontinuous rambling, this was a glaring act of professionalism. Ms. Marshall warmed to the role, pulling her hair back from her face, smiling, keeping the show brisk. At the set's middle, she went back to her strange old ways for a minute: she gave the band a break, sang with a cracking voice and some rudimentary guitar chords, and covered her face with her hair.

...

[end of excerpts from story]

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[Jasper]

I had never been to a Cat Power concert before, but I'd heard from friends that she's so shy that she played one concert with her back to the audience the entire time. I had no idea what to expect, but her performance just blew us away. She was dancing and goofing around virtually the entire time, and her voice sounded incredible even though she was clearing her throat a lot and kept asking for more ginger tea.

The evening started with two kick-ass pieces from the Memphis Rhythm band. The whole group was fantastic and to see the legendary Teenie Hodges was beyond cool. Then, out comes the Cat dressed in black with white sneakers and, in quick succession, nailed the first 6 songs from the album, sounding exactly like the album. During "Where is my love?" the backup singers got a chance to angelically sing a few verses. Chan came back dressed in a white dress, did some more songs from the album (including The Moon and Islands, complete with steel-string guitar and hula-type dancing).

The band left, and Cat did an incredible solo set, including a version of the Everly Brothers Dream ("Whenever I want you all I gotta do is dream...") and a haunting version of House of the Rising Sun (I *so* wish I'd smuggled a recorder in to catch this!!! I sure hope it gets released someday). She also did "Hate" from the album, interestingly changing the words to "I do not hate myself and I don't want to die." (Good news for all fans!)

The band came back and did a few more numbers on their own, and Chan came out from backstage into the audience area and stood up right in front of the stage to dance with a few friends facing the band. My wife noticed the usher was about to clear out this wild fan when some tour personnel came up and intercepted the usher before he could escort Cat out!

Anyway, they all did Love and Communication building to the end, and then for a final number, Chan did a solo of the classic "I can't give you anything but love, baby" while the band members snapped their fingers.

My only complaint was that whenever Cat Power was onstage, the lighting went down. My guess was that she didn't want to be too visible, which is a shame because she looked so beautiful and danced so fantastically, I would've liked to see her more clearly. My only regret was that I didn't go *both nights* and that I didn't bring binoculars.

[Cat Fan]

Wow, Jasper, sounds like you saw a great show! I hope more people post about the shows they see too since I may not get to see any!