Jesse Christen

Just because someone is good in the studio doesn’t mean they are worth seeing live. A perfect example is Tori Amos, whom I had the unfortunate experience of seeing Saturday, March 29th.

When you read this review remember I am only knocking her as a live performer, not as a studio artist. I was looking forward to the gig after making myself familiar with her music over the last several weeks. It’s great for what it is.

But as a live performer she’s a real turd. And not just any kind of turd, but a dried up whitish-gray ghost turd. Her act contains no energy. Like a ghost turd, it doesn’t even entertain with stench so one can gross his/her friends out, it just turns to dust when touched.

For starters her show was an arrogant display of self-grandeur: she only spoke to the audience once and appeared to be annoyed to have to play at all. Nothing interesting was added to any of her songs, they were slower and far more painful than on CD. Her performance on the piano shows that she is a one-dimensional player who can’t improvise or play any style other than what you hear on her albums.

Another annoying aspect of her show is all the sage that is burned on stage. Somehow smoke from that stinky weed was being piped out in mass quantities. I guess she needs it to warn the evil spirits away, the show is bad enough without them.

Even the person whom I attended the concert with, who is a huge Tori fan and had seen her before in concert, wanted to leave before the first encore. She said that last time she saw Tori perform it was fun and entertaining. This is proof that Ms. Amos doesn’t care about her fans and has a cruel sense of humor: she is so convinced of her greatness that she can make a packed house suffer through several hours of torture.

People claim that Catholic mass is boring, but I would rather kneel through an entire Stations of the Cross service than see Tori Amos again. Besides, the incense smells better than that damn sage.