Last night I went out with robotify, redmed, and Dustin to the Ani Difranco concert. Over dinner (“Zen” sushi, yay!) I shared the fact that I don’t feel particularly inspired by any of the candidates for president this year. Later, As we were walking into the Orpheum, I was gently moved aside. I turned, and Dennis Kucinich was – like – less than five feet away from me.
Okay, world, thank you. I find that I receive very specific information these days, and quite rapidly too.
Ani brought him up on stage before she went on, and he gave a really solid four or five minute speech. He worked the crowd well, starting off quickly to identify phrases and ideas that lit up the room … and then focusing on the things that we seemed to care about. No prompters, no notes. Just him talking to the crowd. It was refreshing. His core message was that war, environmental destruction, and addiction to oil are a single problem. That unless you address the whole system, you miss the point.
Perhaps more amazing to me, he stuck around for the whole show. I mean, if *I* was close enough to Ani to pull such a stunt .. *I* would be sticking around for all the shows. But … aren’t all politicians corrupt and soulless or something? In fact, for her second encore, she brought the opening act AND Kucinich up on stage. She gave him a maraca and stood him back from the microphones, but still. Visualize any other candidate on stage with freakin’ Ani Difranco, wearing a big smile and having a great time.
Ani was, as usual, amazing. She’s had her baby since the last time I saw her, and she’s now tiny and just afire with energy. She’s one of those performers who give their band a break between sets … and uses the break to play some solo stuff. The new material was nearly all for her daughter. My favorite new lyric was “you’re gonna love this world, if it’s the last thing I do.”
She started off with “Fuel,” but about two lines into the song she burst out laughing. The band dropped into a smooth vamp while she explained that she had picked it because of the refrain, in honor of Kucinich … “a fire that’s just waiting for fuel.” She hadn’t thought about the line halfway through the first verse: “I wonder who’s gonna be president, tweedle dumb or tweedle dumber?” She encouraged us to see it as a … well … you know … you know, don’t you? Then she slammed straight back into the song.
It’s refreshing and awesome to see a performer who’s that confident and smooth … and to see her with a band who are ready to roll with whatever the hell she throws them. It’s good to see that there are still real human beings able to make a living as artists these days.
That woman can play the ever living hell out of a guitar. They kept bringing her fresh ones … one instrument per song. It was stunning to hear the different tunings … different stringings … different numbers of strings, from a four string banjo tuning to a 12 string old school four octave spread. Perhaps the loudest and most intense that it got was during a solo rendition of “Two Little Girls.” I leaned over to redmed and remarked that (so I’ve heard) on Thursdays, Ani gives guitar lessons to God. I mean, wow.
Her banter was fun. She talked a lot about politics, how … in my primitive paraphrase:
The media are determined to make this election be about who has the better suit … whose wife said what. If we buy into that, if we believe it, then we cede ultimate power to the media. If we let them make us believe that the election is a celebrity event, then they get to pick the person who starts wars. That’s not what Democracy is supposed to be. It seems a crying shame to send a businessman to do a statesman’s job.”
Also, about child bearing:
I gave birth at home (pauses for cheering), and I think I learned something. I think I respect women more now than I ever have in my entire life (pause for more cheering). I mean, even little miss soccer mom with three kids went through that same thing. I’d always sort of made fun of her, but wow. I think it’s sort of a yin and yang thing, if you’re going to do something that cool … it’s gonna kick your ass in proportion. Also, I’ve still got the … you know … in the freeezer. (yet more cheering) Yeah, I thought that was going to be cooler than it is. It’s just sort of next to the frozen chicken now, like hey … what’s for dinner – woah!. At this point I’m looking for a tree to fertilize.
So it was a good time.
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