So young, yet so bitter.

Last week I went to the Damien Rice / Fiona Apple concert. I was really going only for Damien Rice... if you are not familiar with his music, they have played a few of his songs on "Lost" and also on the movie "Closer." He is from Ireland, and his album "O" is one of my favorites. So I was all excited for this concert - but alas, my expectations were not met. Here's why:
1) Loud, drunk, obnoxious people were completely surrounding me.
The concert was at 'Charter One pavilion on Northerly Island' - and while it was a cool location (on the lake, facing the city skyline), people basically acted like they were at their family reunion picnic rather than at a concert. I don't know if the open-air set-up exacerbated the loudness of the crowd, or if it would've seemed as loud had we been in a normal stadium, but I could barely hear the performers. Granted, most people around me seemed to be just waiting for Fiona to come on, but did they have to have their conversations so loudly and act completely oblivious to those around them actually trying to hear? I even shot "e's look of death" a few times at the people behind me, but they had one too many Coors Light Tall-boys in them to care and/or notice.

2) The use of the voice distortion gizmo by Damien Rice.
WHY WHY WHY do singers do this? Seriously, I don't get it. There's only one song that I can stand it on that I can think of (and it still took a while to get used to), and that's "Hide & Seek" by Imogen Heap. In Justin Timberlake's new song "SexyBack," he uses the distortion the ENTIRE song. I can see if someone has a horrible voice, but Damien Rice does not, and the fact that he used it on about 60-70% of the songs was extremely annoying, not to mention grating on the ol' eardrums. It was like he found a new toy that he wanted to show off or something.

3) Once again, the song set did not include what I wanted to hear.
So this happened at Madonna and Radiohead as well, as I wrote a month or so ago. With Damien Rice, he did not play his most famous song ("The Blower's Daughter"). He also did not play the majority of songs from his only album. I mean, COME ON. We GET that you are this non-mainstream Irish "artiste" and you're not a sell-out and you're not hugely commercial... THAT'S WHY we're all getting bitten to death by mosquitoes, sweating buckets while watching you perform at a random outdoor venue rather than at the United Center. But for the love of God, is it SO HARD to play the songs that made people want to come to your concert in the first place?!?!?! I can't take it.

Now on to Fiona Apple. Here is one mad little lady. Somebody done her WRONG! She is PISSED OFF and perhaps also a tad psychotic - never a good combination. When she was not growling into the microphone, pounding on the piano or tying her extremely long hair back into various shapes atop her head, she appeared to be talking to herself or yelling obscenities while stomping around the stage with the microphone away so we didn't really know what was going on.

It kind of took all attention away from her songs. I just kept thinking, "What is she going to do next?"

Also, I couldn't get past the fact that I thought she and Mary Kate Olsen were separated at birth. Look at this below, and then tell me I'm wrong.























If Fiona starts dressing in bag-lady clothes, then we will know that they ARE one in the same.
- e