Music Crush: Ani DiFranco to you

Sunday night fucking blasting concert: CHECK
Once more, I give you the Ani D show. Damn, that woman simply rocks. It was only my second Ani gig and it got me as high as the first one. It's as good as any drug can get. Yes, there, you have it, I'm a music addict. For real. And Ani is my special candy drug. It's all jittery, jumpy, fun and twisted and melancholic at the same time. And freaking HILARIOUS too.

Ani, if you ever decide, for some silly reason (kids, husband, loss of a hand) to stop making music, I'll kill you. Or maybe just cry in despair for weeks the loss of a true riot girl, coupled with a modern era poet.

Little Ani awarded us with almost two hours (stupid curfews) of pure fun. She set the tone right from the start with a blatant Shy. There. Take that, fans. Pick up your teeth and sing. 10 seconds. That's all it took for the crowd to go bananas after recognizing the tune. Little side note here, where were all the lesbo ladies? I'm thinking they were all dressed up as lanky, hairy dudes, since I only spotted a few weird haircuts & leathers. Anyways. Forget about the new album, the yet worthy Red Letter Year, this one was all about the classics. Yep. Aside from 32 Flavours, the electrical-tape-fingers lady performed all my favorites amongst her 3 gazillions songs. She sparkled her never-out-of-fashion rants (hello, Napoleon) with a few tunes from Knuckle Down and Educated Guess (her most recent good stuff, if you ask me) and that was it. Flown by, the gripping poem Parameters. Gone, the sumptuous Grey - damn those concert fleas, they always end up stuck right under my eyelids, somehow making me teary, go figure... Ok, I cried (just a little). It was just too short, even with the (even shorter) encore. Ani left everybody elated with the easy and triumphant Both Hands and Gravel.
Easy, breezy, beautiful, Righteous Girl...

She might be 38 or something, this lady sure knows how to handle a picky audience. That would be the Parisian crowd to you. Parisians have a stick so high up their asses they look like flagpoles...Ani cracked jokes about her daughter, her shabby, falling-to-pieces boots and her gluing back her fingers together. She even self-interrupted on Imagine That because of the people's reaction to the lyrics. Here's a little re-enactment of that (since I didn't tape the dialog, it's a free rendition of the event...):

Ani:(singing) Imagine I'm at your mercy
Crowd: woohoooooo
Ani:(singing) Imagine you're at mine
Crowd: WOOOOOOHHHOOOOOOOOOOO (that's the crowd going hysterical, in case you have no imagination and/or are dumb)
Ani:(not singing, just cracked up) I knew it, I knew it ! I've been playing this song all over Europe and people just go "oh well, yeah, sure". But here! Nooooo, you LOVE that ! I'd been wondering what the French VS. American fuss was all about, but now I know, it's just that we're the same ! We're the same!

I personnally construe this as: French and Americans are equally deranged, aggressive and slightly masochistic. Having studdied both species up-close and personnal, I would say it's true and also toss in an unbecoming superiority complex.

Not only was the concert sublime, it was also educationnal. Thank you, Ani, for the exquisite rapture of your music, your insane guitar technique and for the inter-cultural, self-deprecating but fair insight. And for the pussy song...

Hamel On Trial - Pussy