From: "Anthony J. Rzepela" <rzepelaa@netaxs.com>
Subject: Walkin' Blind III (sights, sounds, Irving Plaza '96)
To: babel-list@postmodern.com (babel-list)
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 1996 23:22:14 -0400 (EDT)


[I've read up to digest #107 now, so I'm not as blind as I used to be. 
 Whatever.]


About a Boy/Patti's interviews/the ride home:

    Facing another 2-hour Greyhound Bus trip home after show 2, 
    I resolved to actually get my hands on something to read, and lo
    and behold, the double-issue of RS with the Patti interview
    was available at the PA Bus Terminal.  (I'm sure this will provide
    plenty of fodder once more people get to read it. Patti talks 
    frankly in it about her home life with Fred the first few years
    (and we get an explanation, in passing, of why she was so
    hard to locate in Detroit the first coupla years, per Morrisoe))
    
    I found her remarks re: Cobain and 'About a Boy' the most interesting.

    It's only been in the most recent interviews (RS and Spin) that
    I got the feeling that Patti really did appreciate Nirvana and
    Cobain, and that she wasn't just trying to drum up discussion 
    of "About a Boy".  That song has gone through many, many changes
    in a short time. Her live-performance babel of it wasn't always 
    focused (and yes, it STILL changes night to night, as it did 
    at Irving), but it was one particular performance of it 
    last November that struck me the most: one in which it was 
    the most clear (in my mind) of the dual passions of the song's 
    narrator: that there was a sympathy with an equally strong 
    condemnation. I found nothing wrong with presenting these 
    things in balance - indeed, I felt the balance strongly myself
    at the time of Cobain's event. Patti explains in detail in the
    interview how the three verses are actually about different people, 
    and the influence of Garcia's death on the actual recording date.

    (I just figured out that the song was obviously recorded before I
    first heard it in November of '95. Weird. So much for embryonic.)

    She also reveals in the interview a little bit of bitterness 
    toward a character who would do such a thing, when there were
    people (she used Robert as an example) who struggled so hard to 
    hold on.

    Whatever. 

    It was obvious to me by the time of Irving 2 that she really has
    no intention of NOT using "AAB" as a babel vehicle (which may
    explain my over-the-top reaction to getting "AAB" 
    interrupted as rudely as it was by IP personnel). As a result, 
    I accord it the attention it deserves when she does it.

    And since the songs she has chosen from the "old days" are
    so few, I figure they deserve some attention, too. I was always
    rewarded over these two evenings for my time and concentration.
    (Well, Okay - I spaced on "Ghost Dance", but I never liked
    it anyway. So much for integrity.) 

    A couple reviews here have commented on the energy (specifically,
    the lack of it) from the crowd. By the end of these two evenings,
    something else was painfully obvious to me, too: that when interest
    started to wane, all Patti had to do was overdo some shaking or 
    screaming or something, and the crowd would go nuts. It was like a
    burlesque. (She overdoes it on "Summer Cannibals", I think. The crowd
    doesn't seem to get the point without a lot of body language, 
    and I think there's a fetish for "drama" at work in the audience 
    that makes me a bit uncomfortable.)

    The other option, of course, is to pull out an "oldie".

    Lenny, in one of his recent interviews, commented on 
    a review that dismissed the PSG/96 as a "bar band".
    He (LK) tried to extol the virtues of bar bands everywhere. And 
    they are virtuous. There's a dignity and beauty to doing 
    your job well and being prepared to play any number of things,
    (like, say "Smoke on the Water").

    But during the 2nd show, it was obvious to me that this
    was anything but a "bar band" (in the bad sense of that
    word, I assure you). If the PSG/96 were a "bar band", 
    they could have pulled out "Ask the Angels" or "Pumpin'"
    (or any of the dozens of requests) without any loss of integrity to 
    this performance.
    
    (I'm still wrestling with whether a "Land"/"R'nR Nigger"
    medley is treading on thin ice, but that's for later.)

    There's an enormous amount of work, thought, and intelligence
    going on in these shows. And there's also an enormous amount
    of musical instinct and showbiz dexterity which preserve its
    integrity as a rock and roll concert.

    As another review (here) pointed out, Patti's confidence has
    taken a gargantuan leap (as exemplified by what happens
    onstage during "Farewell Reel") recently. Her armor is on, 
    but not all doubts and demons exorcised. She (and the
    rest of PSG/96) obviously do not want to be a "traveling 
    jukebox", but they know people _have_ been waiting since 1980.
    She's still not sure of the things she has/needs to say 
    about rather weighty topics, and that is changing, too - 
    nightly, it seems. There is something defiantly alive 
    in this little corner of the universe, and one hopes that 
    the demands presented by the 
    music business on an artist's time and integrity do not 
    wreak the havoc they did first time around.

    Good luck, Patti.

++Tony Rzepela (rzepelaa@netaxs.com)