Madeleine Peyroux at GW’s Lisner Auditorium
My wife, Patricia, got a call yesterday from one of our Nashville friends, Pat. He was backing Madeleine Peyroux at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium, just a couple of blocks from Foggy Bottom last night and wanted us to come to the show. Neither of us had heard of Madeleine Peyroux, but Pat is one of those special people you want to see — in fact, we are blessed to have great friends — they have bent over backwards for us, and I hope that I/we am/are the same.
We got to the Lisner just before showtime, a long but fast moving line, picked up the tickets and backstage passes (!) at the Will Call window — our seats were 7 rows back from the stage, on the center aisle. The Lisner reminds me of Langford at Vanderbilt, but about half again bigger, presumably to accommodate DC crowds, and it was sold out. The opening act, an acoustic guitarist from Portland, OR was great — but I can’t recall his name, and surprisingly can’t easily find him on the Web, though you would think that there would be enough constraints to nail it quickly, and I’m not a naive user. Apparently, there is a lot that publicists (who are wanting to promote new artists) still don’t get about the Web — they introduce a new act, apparently expect people to remember the name, because they (at least in this case) don’t set up the online constraints to find the name quickly (in about 2 minutes) when you look on impulse afterwards. Or heck, maybe I just missed it — it wouldn’t be the first time, but … 
.
Madelein Peyroux was outstanding. As I experience over and over, there is something about a live performance that is much different — I don’t think that I’d listen to her regularly in the iTunes context. Tony Bennet, Keb Mo, Leftover Salmon, Buddy Rich, Minton Sparks ( I held her purse during the show at The Basement — I was in the front, and she threw me the purse and told me to watch it) and the Nashville Symphony for that matter — all performers that have mesmerized me live, but a slew of CDs bought on impulse immediately afterwards, certainly in the case of Keb Mo and Leftover Salmon, but rarely played are evidence that the peak live experience doesn’t necessarily transfer. It’s not that I don’t like the music, but when I have a choice, and with an iPod the choice is as easy as with remote control (almost), I choose something else. This isn’t all that different from back-in-the day — you could still pull out my vinyl record collection and easily — very easily — spot the tracks that I regularly listened to, or even the segments within tracks. I’m not really a fan of artists, but a fan of songs, and even covers — that’s not bragging — I think that it may be related to attention span!
“A Little Bit” is but one song I really liked, even the studio version below, but the live version rocked a bit more, with Pat going off on a build with his guitar — wonderful.
“A Little Bit”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhkXPoHxx4s
I am pretty sure that we’ll be going back to the Lisner for this show :
Yamato: Demon Drummers of Japan: http://lisner.org/eventdetails.asp?id=521
I think that I’m a drummer actually.