Alanis Morisette Concert
Alanis Morisette reminds me of a gawky young kid watching a gawky young kid, through the lens of MTV Asia (or was it Channel V?) in her now famous video weird Black and White video of 'One hand in my pocket.'
It has been a long time ( 7 years ) since Alanis released her first CD -- Jagged little pill -- that went on to become one of the largest selling albums of the 90s. One has to wonder what sort of mass appeal this 28 year old woman can have when her lyrics make everybody take an S.A.T. all over again.
It was one of my quests when that excited me to no end when Puja surprised me pleasently by getting these tickets for us.
So when we drove 30 miles to PNC Bank Arts Center just off Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, it was a cold summer evening -- pleasent yet chilly but beautiful in all its contradictory glory.
The concert was opened by some young unknown singer called Res. It was thoroughly boring -- well that is probably a bit unjust as in a concert you usually need to know the songs to enjoy them -- so we didn't.
When Alanis finally made it to the stage at 9pm in a super commercialized vehicle of light and sound, one would wonder if God himself (herself?) was about to descend on the planet.
After that it was her pure musical and more so -- literary talents that kept us -- and everybody else -- engrossed for about 2 hours. She had tremendous energy throughout. Her songs have an enourmous weight and she seems to carry them pretty well. She sang all her hits, except Ironic, sandwitched betwen 'Baba' and 'Thank you'. Songs like 'You oughtta know', 'You live, you learn', 'Uninvited', 'Thank you', 'See right thru you', etc. were major crowd pleasers -- who sang word by word along with her.
Talking of the crowd, we were probably the only non-white people in the audience. Made up primarily of white women betwen 15 and 35. Men were escorts at best and fans at worst. It is easy to speculate why. Alanis sings of the angst of the scorned woman, esentially meek but wanting to strike out. Her songs focus on feelings way too much -- derived from her personal experience mostly.
It has been a long time ( 7 years ) since Alanis released her first CD -- Jagged little pill -- that went on to become one of the largest selling albums of the 90s. One has to wonder what sort of mass appeal this 28 year old woman can have when her lyrics make everybody take an S.A.T. all over again.
It was one of my quests when that excited me to no end when Puja surprised me pleasently by getting these tickets for us.
So when we drove 30 miles to PNC Bank Arts Center just off Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, it was a cold summer evening -- pleasent yet chilly but beautiful in all its contradictory glory.
The concert was opened by some young unknown singer called Res. It was thoroughly boring -- well that is probably a bit unjust as in a concert you usually need to know the songs to enjoy them -- so we didn't.
When Alanis finally made it to the stage at 9pm in a super commercialized vehicle of light and sound, one would wonder if God himself (herself?) was about to descend on the planet.
After that it was her pure musical and more so -- literary talents that kept us -- and everybody else -- engrossed for about 2 hours. She had tremendous energy throughout. Her songs have an enourmous weight and she seems to carry them pretty well. She sang all her hits, except Ironic, sandwitched betwen 'Baba' and 'Thank you'. Songs like 'You oughtta know', 'You live, you learn', 'Uninvited', 'Thank you', 'See right thru you', etc. were major crowd pleasers -- who sang word by word along with her.
Talking of the crowd, we were probably the only non-white people in the audience. Made up primarily of white women betwen 15 and 35. Men were escorts at best and fans at worst. It is easy to speculate why. Alanis sings of the angst of the scorned woman, esentially meek but wanting to strike out. Her songs focus on feelings way too much -- derived from her personal experience mostly.