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The last of the Lilith Fairs | page 1, 2
It's amazing how wide-angled and Technicolor Vega's two-piece lineup
seemed after Nina Gordon's. She played simple acoustic guitar with only
a bassist on the side, but the arrangements seemed spacious rather than
sparse -- with each instrument filling its own tonal niche, but always
conscious of what the other was doing. They were loose, but always in
tandem. Vega's voice is thin on record, but smoky and nuanced up close,
and expressive in the way that human voices are when they're really
expressing something, instead of just doing little singerly flourishes
for effect's sake. "Luka" was the big crowd-pleaser, but she managed to
float "Tom's Diner" as an a cappella singalong, which was maybe a bit
grade-school, but cool nonetheless. Splashdown: second stage, trained musicians doing a Gen-X costume act. Wonderful technique, weird clothes (chrome lamé on one; moon boots,
bondage skirt and kneepads on another; big pants on a third, etc.) --
essentially a jumbled mess of styles. Imagine something trip-hoppy with
Spanish guitar and a Pavement riff in the middle, and Fiona Apple
singing jazz stylings over the top. Sample lyric: "I need a sugar high/Oh muh-muh-my!" You can see how record execs would go crazy for it,
but take the gimmicks away and there doesn't seem to be any personality
underneath. Female singer; all-guy band; smells like Berklee grads. No
offense, but why is this a Lilith act? Segue to Sandra Bernhard on the main stage, complaining about all the
mild, girly women on the program, "Will somebody please give me a sweaty
rock 'n' roll bitch?!" Not yet -- wee, fey Mya is on. Mega-cool tap-dance routine at
the end. Seems she studied with Gregory Hines. Otherwise it's pretty
much a Disney soundtrack, except for the groundbreaking addition of a
female! lead! guitarist! Mya was a bit chunky too, and wearing
comfortable pants. Woowoo! Mya is officially punk-rock for breaking the
Lilith barrier. And then Chrissie Hynde ... But what's to say? Chrissie is punk rock incarnate, and she's approaching the most graceful 50 in the rock biz -- looking about as old as she is, but never really aging, and packing
the same killer voice she's always had. The Pretenders appear to be in
the doghouse with the Lilith staff, which seems just about right
somehow. "Sarah likes us so much, she's invited us back next year,"
Chrissie quipped -- when Lilith is, of course, folding up for good after
this season's run. "You all had better be having a good time," she
asided, "or else I'm going to be in big trouble ..." They also threw some
musical barbs into the ring, beginning with "Popstar" ("They don't make
'em like they used to"), and following up with "Message of Love," the
firmest thesis of gender politics that anyone would whip out during the
entire festival. Troublemakers. The crowd was going a restrained sort of
nuts throughout the set, although the sound was a bit skronky and the
band didn't rock as hard as they might have. And some stray oofy guy in
the orchestra section kept yelling, "Joey!!!" as though Johnette
Napolitano of Concrete Blonde had to come marching out and explain that
she was in a different band entirely. Still, Pretenders is Pretenders,
and it's good, good, good -- though not much like Brigitte Bardot. A characteristic Chrissie Hynde moment came during the later
power ballad "I'll Stand By You," when a roadie came out during the
middle of the song to hand her a guitar. In the space between the verse
and chorus, her attention came off the crowd for a moment and she gave
him a nod and thank you as the instrument changed hands. It was nothing,
but it also wasn't: With all the carousing and kicking in windows of
police cars and causing of public scenes and beating up of Carly Simon
that the woman's done, it's obvious that she doesn't have to be
reflexively cordial to Sarah McLachlan's road crew in order to keep up
her reputation. But nobody else on the main stage even glanced at the
roadies when instruments were changing hands. Why bother? Well, why not
bother? If you look hard enough, it's possible to see everything
essentially good or bad about human nature springing from that one
simple dichotomy. Common decency is punk rock to the extreme. And Sheryl Crow is much better live than you'd ever suspect just from
hearing her on record. Also much smaller. The celebrity height index,
barring athletes, runs from Jean-Paul Sartre (4-foot-10) to John Kenneth
Galbraith (6-foot-8), and one has to wonder ... No, it's immaterial. If this
weren't Salon, which scours out double entendres from its pages like a
prosodic autoclave, one would say something about how every woman in the
audience already knew that size doesn't matter, and that it's the rhythm
that counts. Well, she's damn little, anyway, and the rhythm does count:
"Anything But Down" was understated but infernally tight, and "Everyday
Is a Winding Road" had an altered, more percussive arrangement with a
mile-wide sound. The P.A. was in better, louder trim than for the
Pretenders' set -- and Crow's keyboard and string players helped fatten
things up -- but much of the set's roaring bigness was pure tone and
musicianship. She sounds like a lessoned player, but not an overstudied
one, and she has a good balance of feel and precision on both guitar and
bass. She also has a corky-haired guitar player with perfect country
chops, and another guy with more of a hard-rock feel, and the three of
them nudge one another's playing around like they're wired up by the
brains. Crow isn't a solo act; she's in the band -- and she gives off the
same odd real-person vibe onstage as Hynde does. Their body
language is even similar: shoulders, not hips. It's an uncommon thing.
Weird to see two people like that on the same bill. Pinnacle of the set:
a "Sweet Child o' Mine" that kicked Axl Rose's skinny white butt all
the way around the arena. And then, as the last burst of feedback faded from Sheryl Crow's
back line, everyone went home. It was late, and nobody really wanted to
see Sarah McLachlan anyway. "She's boring," one concert-goer remarked.
Another complained, "She never even comes out in the coffin anymore."
Actually -- and I say this as an early fan -- with the whole crowd of
17,000 souls leaping to their feet as Sarah treaded out onstage, and
pretty much staying there wailing and carrying on as the set unfolded,
it wasn't all that much to listen to. She started with "Possession," and
it was grand, and big, and epic, but a bit sterile and elliptical, and
the melody didn't seem to want to go anywhere. She tended to inflect
each song the same way, with a classy lilt and a bit of oceanic sadness
-- and it wasn't until "Building a Mystery" that melodic hooks and
arrangements began to overtake the pearly performances. "Sweet
Surrender" followed, and had some power and emotional range to it, but
glossing over the high spots, every song was a prom song -- a
lighter-flicker -- that sounded a little too much like nothing specific.
It's the Natalie Merchant syndrome: After a while, it all ... starts to ... zzzzz. Meanwhile, the crowd was uprooting the arena to carry it up and down the
Parkway in triumph. Sarah would blink, and a thousand people would
expire from sheer, terrible awe. If this is all it takes to catapult a
person into God-popular superheroism -- putting a festival together for
young women to go to -- then somebody please start planning the Medea
Fair, with all snarly, bad-attitude performers, and sweaty rock chicks
who are woman enough to play in the rhythm section. Put Tribe 8 on the
second stage, Joan Jett on the first one, slap a huge Hothead Paisan
banner over the midway and have a grand, roistering party in the
parking lot, with people whipping frisbees all over the place. And if
anyone goes into the speak-out booth to free-associate, a boxing glove
will come accordioning out and bop them right in the nose -- and only
real, needle-type "girls rule" tattoos, thanks. Right next to the free
underpants-painting booth -- unisex, on demand.
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About the writer Sound off Related Salon stories Quiet grrrls Lilith Fair at the Shoreline Amphitheater Mountain View, Calif., July 8, 1997. Throwing ovaries Bemoaning the second-grade sensibility of the pseudo-feminist Lilith Fair. The great Pretender A walking contradiction of tough talk and tender gestures, Chrissie Hynde inspired a generation of female rockers and fans.
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