A I M E E   M A N N

Juliana Hatfield was the opening act -- a nice surprise for me because she wasn't listed on the bill when the original concert was announced, but local fans said she'd been mentioned on recent radio stations. Juliana's been a fave of mine since she left the Blake Babies & went out on her own in the early 90's. Her music has a slightly more rockier/alternative style than Aimee, although she also writes many fine introspective ballads too. She played all solo electric guitar & vocal.

For her second song, she sang "My Sister", a '93 EP/single of hers that I still have, and still a favorite. It has all of Juliana's signature musical traits in it. Playing it stripped down, with only guitar & vocal, she did a terrific job. Her vocals have developed more range and power over the years, and this song lets her really rip. I'd only seen Juliana play "live" via a video file on her website some time ago, and her voice tonight was much less "delicate" than that performance -- vocally much stronger, yet with her unique endearing voice. Juliana played her electric guitar straight, without any major effects (that I could hear), with a great full tone, and a solid performance.

Aimee and her band came out very strong. This is the view from the balcony. Aimee waved to us while letting the downstairs audience know we were actually all up here.

"The moth don't care when he sees the flame"

Opening up was a great up-tempo & rockier version of The Moth ...very solid. I DO think it would have been more dynamic a performance if Aimee had started it solo with her acoustic guitar, and then launched briskly into the up-tempo part midway through. The flame (Aimee) was bright indeed tonight for a room full of us fluttering moths.

After a few songs Aimee seemed to relax a bit. Her voice got a bit stronger, and she seemed to warm up to the crowd, getting downright frisky by the end.

Trivia time: Drummer John Sands reminds me a bit of British drummer John Halsey. Halsey played (among others) with the great songwriter Neil Innes, who's credited for a small bit on "It's Not Safe", the best cut on Aimee's I'M WITH STUPID album.

Aimee took off her now well-traveled jacket and switched to bass for a bit, and the mix sounded a bit smoother. If there was one disappointment for me, it was...

...the poor audio mix for the hall. It wasn't that bad, but it left much room for improvement. I'm not sure of the exact reasons, but the bass guitar was mixed poorly [why not go with a tried and true Dual Showman type of set-up of decades past?] Also, the vocals were missing some of the upper midrange because the hall's sound system didn't have suitable drivers (?) for this range. Whatever the reasons, it sounded as if the bass was mixed too high and blurring the vocals; and it's working "range" was rather limited because it wasn't equalized well for the hall. The end effect was like trying to look at a beautiful view through a smudged window. The keyboards were also too down in the mix. The whole mix of hall + band equipment needed some better synergy... and that's as much an art as the music part. My guess is that the limited time to set-up, and difficulty integrating the equipment with different halls was part of the reason for this.

Another complaint is that not enough song-dynamics were produced until the very end of the show. Additional effort could be put into re-arranging some of the songs differently for a live production, the same way considerable planning goes into production details and minutia in the studio. Such attention could have made this truly spectacular.

Aimee's vocals and lyrics are the heart of her songs, and the audience should be able to hear them with an intimacy and crystal-clarity as if she was whispering in your ear. Such was not the case as audience newcomers were, at times, wondering exactly what the lyrics were. It is possible to make a big improvement here. Just one possibility is Sennheiser's cutting edge microphone technology that's being used by many bands in more intimate venues like the one here. I recently listened to the new 4-CD box set from Jellyfish.... some of their live recordings, despite being a decade old now, show just how clearly a talented band can sound from an audio perspective.

Would have loved to hear more songs like this, with a quieter acoustic arrangement and production-mix. Acoustic dynamics are the heart of any great sound experience.

Somewhere halfway through the performance I managed to get a nice fingerprint onto my lens... a mishap made possible by the complete darkness in the hall, and my fumbling with the lens-cap. It's the first time that's ever happened, lest you think I'm a fumbling idiot (idiot, maybe... fumbler, not!). No matter though -- I saw no major bad effects in the remaining photos.

I didn't write down the set list so I won't try to list songs from memory. Suffice it to say Aimee spanned all her work, even having fun with a fan who shouted out a request for "Voices Carry". [No! No! I moaned] Her humorous reply showed what a good mood she was in. She bantered and joked a bit about being dared to play the song, finally saying: "... alright, we're gonna fu_kin' play it!". Actually, the version they played was rather good.