After the travesty that was the cancellation of the Houston Lilith Fair concert date this summer, Sarah McLachlan treated us to a non-Lilith Sarah concert at Verizon Theater in downtown Houston on November 2nd. Three words: I heart her. I hadn’t seen her live since her last tour, way back in 2004, and I had missed her so. Sarah is my favorite female musician. (Prince is my fave male and overall #1, duh). I have loved her ever since I “discovered” her at the inaugural Lilith Fair show in Milwaukee back in 1997. I went to see Jewel, who was making a name for herself based on her hit debut cd (“Who Will Save Your Soul,” “You Were Meant for Me,” “Foolish Games”). I loved Jewel and her Alaskan homeless-living-in-a-van schtick, her yodeling, her bad teeth, her strange & lovely vocal stylings. But that’s another love story, isn’t it? This is supposed to be about Sarah. So, I went to Lilith because of Jewel and came away from it absolutely mesmerized by Sarah McLachlan’s voice. (For the record, I still love Jewel. She’s a close second to Sarah.)
I describe Sarah’s voice as “lilting.” For me, it’s all about her voice, and she still sounds amazing. I literally (and yes, I really mean literally—that’s not hyperbole) got chills several times during the show, especially when she sang her awesome oldies & hit the high notes. Sigh. So great! And I got misty at some point. I think it was during "Path of Thorns (In Terms of Endearment," which I absolutely adore, and she sounded just like she did years ago. That shouldn't be so impressive, but in the current musical world of autotune and all-flash-no-vocal-substance it is so damn refreshing to hear someone sing well. For several years. Someone who actually and effortlessly sounds like their recordings. It's a rare and special thing.
I had a shitty day yesterday at school, and some “Sarahpy” (Get it? “Sarah” & “therapy” combined. I just came up with it!) was just what the doctor ordered. I’ve always found her music to be very calming (which means I should have it on a constant loop during the school year.), and last night was no exception. After one song, I felt some of the stress melt away.
Besides her amazing vocals, Sarah played instruments of course. I’m always impressed when I see people in concert who constantly switch instruments (see also Jewel, Prince—especially Prince). I couldn’t help but be impressed as she swapped out various guitars, and occasionally skipped them altogether in favor of the piano they wheeled out.
There was also a cute Q&A session featuring audience questions collected in a hat. Sarah would pull out a question & answer it. She said it was an attempt to engage the audience and make things interactive (if you teach, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?). It was pretty fun, except that some people interpreted it as an invitation to shout out random things. Highlights: a woman yelling out, “You’re a MILF, Sarah! You’re a MILF!” (and yes it was a woman who said it. LOL.); another woman asking “How do you feel about the term ‘vagina music’?” to which Sarah responded that she’d never heard of it, which is funny because I’m pretty sure she’s largely considered to be the queen of vagina music, Queen Vag (pronounced “vaj”, rhymes with “badge”), if you will.
Visual audience highlight: guy in a suit headbanging and fist pumping to the “rockin’” strains of “Sweet Surrender.” I’ll wait while you try to picture that…It was hilarious. This guy was insane. He was gesticulating so wildly, I was afraid he would accidentally hit someone. And mind you, he was one of only two people even standing (the other was a drunken blond swaying only slightly too enthusiastically to the music), and ya know, it’s a Sarah McLachlan concert! Who does that?! Thankfully, we segued to the encore and possibly the most beautiful song ever, “Angel,” and even suit guy wasn’t so ridiculous as to fist pump to that song. (My concert buddy, meanwhile, was disturbed by the SPCA (pet shelter) commercial association. Tragically, the song now conjures images of three-legged dogs for her.)
Post-concert Weirdness: As we drove through Memorial Park on the way home, we observed a fair amount of joggers. The weird thing was that it was 10:30ish at night on a Tuesday. Where the hell do you work? Don’t you have to get up in the morning? As my concert buddies, both runners, pointed out, don’t you realize it takes time for your body to come down from a run? And don’t even get me started on the lady that was running with her son, who couldn’t have been more than 13 or 14, probably younger. I’m all for kids’ physical fitness, but night jogger boy will be falling asleep in class tomorrow, and that ain’t right. What is wrong with some people?
What a night! Queen Vag is totally blogworthy. Hence this blog. :-)
