SETLIST:

God
Sugar
Juarez*
Cornflake Girl
Bliss
Little Amsterdam**
Angie(solo)**
Icicle(solo)
Glory of the 80's
Blood Roses***
Little Earthquakes***
The Waitress
Precious Things(encore)

* premiere - new song
** first times played on tour
*** may have been in switched order

we're not even seated or looking at the stage when a voice appears from somewhere backstage.. "god sometimes you don't come through.." a few thousand voices work together into a roar as we quickly turn to the stage in time to see the musicians enter while the voice continues on with "..do you need a woman to look after you?"

and so the music begins, and soon enough, a peach clad woman with fussy orange hair appears from the right of the stage, walks to the center and greets the audience before taking her place by the piano. i whisper to gene "i can see her, the piano isn't in the way!" - he merely grins in reply.

as she had opened all dates with god i wasn't surprised, and i've had the luck to have heard this plugged version before - i simply grin and groov while racking my brain for things she might play after this, and i needen't think long before a deep, vibrant bass guitar sound fills the air and our chests.

sugar. i scream. i grab gene's arm and jump up and down a few times before the vibrating sound has resonated so much in my chest that i am forced to stand still in anticipation of the rest of the instruments to join in. once again a song i've heard live before, but this time it's deeper, darker, and the lights reflect the mood by covering everything on stage in dusky blue... i crack a smile when she improv's a line... "tell me what you think they'll do when they find out you're just a pussy"..

no time for breathe. the last note hasn't fully left the insides of my body before something oddly familiar yet completely unknown starts up. i look at gene in bewilderment and he offers up "is it the song they soundchecked four times?" and i nod. this being the fifth time i hear it, i still can not make out any of the words. i try to fit "glory of the 80's" into the chorus, but an "r" sound in the middle of it has me confused.

later i learn that it was the first time this song was played live - it's called juarez and was drawn out after tori learnt about the unsolved rapes and murders of 200 women in the town of juarez... oblivious of this story, i only sense a sadness about it and make a mental note to seek it out as soon as the new album is released. it intrigues me with rich, floaty notes and sometimes i believe i hear the words "no angels here". beautiful.

silence.

tori begins to sing a wonderful a cappella song, and i'm too busy being swept around by the drawn out, echoing vocalizations to hear the words... someone later tells me it was something about "in my mind i'm going to Carolina" and it seems very possible.

it lasts a minute or two, and then she proceeds to introduce the band members. i make sure to scream and clap equally loud for the three men as i'm all about being fair, though i kind of sort of have a little bit of a bigger crush on the drummer (matt chamberlain) than on jon the bassist (whom i affectionately refer to as "jesus on drugs"), and caton the guitarist is cute when he dances but really.. it's all about the matt.

tori gets off the piano bench and arches her back toward the piano, then sits back down and dances slowly... she begins to sing, the music fills in and.. it's cornflake girl. definately time for me to start to dance around in my spot, and i can't help but toss my hair around as the obligatory piano solo's occur.

i look over at gene next to me and see him truly grinning, which in turn makes me grin even more. i wanted so much to show him what a tori concert is like and why i yap so much about them whenever i go to one and i was worried he wouldn't immediately catch onto the tori live-vibe but i needen't have. he is clearly loving it.

the song ends with tori grabbing the microphone and letting out a final giiiiirl! and the lights go out except for a brief red light focused on tori, and i tug gene's arm and whisper "she's gunna play bliss! the song i showed you on video yesterday?" and he nods. like then, the air is filled with a strange swirling sound, like electronic gusts of wind playing around the stage before the song starts up... "father, i... killed my monkey, i... let it out to touch the sweet of spring.."

the driven drum beat and tori's vocals has me silent and staring at the stage. right at this moment i truly believe i know what she means by "super nova juice." (of course, as soon as the song is over i forget, heh.)

brief silence before tori strikes a few chords and my head pretty much explodes. little amsterdam. for some reason, this is a song that always end up making me feel like i've suddenly been sucked back in time 50 years. gene is forced to listen to me shiver out "i think i will die. i can't handle this." i always was one for drama.

i can't help but mouth along with the words that have stuck inside me the most ("i'm just coming out of the cell in my brain" is a line i can never quite shake) and suddenly i discover that tori's playing with the lyrics - on at least two occasions i hear her spell out "you and-a cee" (unc: school) and simply "n.c." a few more times; a treat she always seems to give when she performs here in north carolina (i still chuckle at her jesse helms' reference from the raleigh concert last year.)

suddenly i notice that she's waving bye-bye to the band members walking off stage. time for secret time (i.e. - when tori plays 2 songs solo). i'm still trying to digest her raleigh performance of famour blue raincoat when tori begins to speak: (paraphrasing here, obviously)

"when i was younger my dad had me learn these songs and i heard this and.. my dad wanted me to do "Bringing in the Sheeves" and i heard this and i was like "fuck that, man.."

she begins to sing something and i have no idea what it is the first few lines (someone later tells me it was a few lines from bringing in the sheeves) and then.. "angie... angie.. when will those clouds all disappear" at which point i just stare at gene blankly and state that indeed, "i'm going to die." he's too busy gaping and shaking his head in disbelief to properly roll his eyes at me.

tori's cover of the rolling stones' angie was on the first tori-cd i ever bought (the cruficy ep) and i spent many a-night listening to it on repeat for hours. i've since heard the original, but nothing will ever quite meassure up to tori's version. i also found it especially beautiful because she was a woman singing about another woman - might seem silly, but it was the first time i began to wonder why some songs seem "off limits" because of genders.

the performance is so sharp, so dreamy, so alone, so so beautiful. i must have breathed and blinked during those minutes, but i wouldn't be surprised to learn that i didn't. it's the first time i truly understand what people mean when they describe something as "bone-chilling".

brief silence. tori tilts her head and a rythmic tinkling ensues, a distinct beginning of a song that has everyone scream as they recognize it - icicle. i find myself giggling of delight at finally seeing tori's face as she sings "getting off, getting off, while they're all downstairs". i'm surprised at the emotion she manages to put into every sung word despite it being one of her trademark girls, and it is quite fun to be amongst a few thousand people all humming along.

the band returns, and the intimate mood is replaced by a giddy one and they errupt into a rather fast paced song me and gene quickly identify as glory of the 80's as we hear the opening line "i took a taxi from l.a. to venus in 1985..." - i'm surprised at how much i like it. 3 likes out of 3 new songs definately makes it harder to wait for the new album to be released in september.

silence. band starts up. TORI starts up. tori starts to sing. my mind is blank. i can't make out a single word or note, and stare at gene while mouthing "what the hell is this???" he shakes his head and.. "it's blood roses" he might as well have told me it was tori's version of the band-aid jingle ("i'm stuck on band-aid coz band-aid's stuck on me")

it wasn't different. it was like a whole new song. now, for those of you who have never heard it; the original is a fastpaced harpsichord song. this... this was a sweaty, thick mess that almost seemed present enough to be touched by our bare hands. absolutely gorgeous. i didn't have to look at my arms to feel the hair standing on the back of them when she got to the line "i shaved every place where you've been, boy.."

she ends the song with a sharp, drawn-out "sometimes you're nothing but meat..." and i see matt holding those drum sticks that look like gigantic q-tips and a vibrating sound fills the air, tori leans down the side and... it's little earthquakes. i'm at a point where i can't even state that i'm going to die. it's too much. dumb-founded tears well up and surprise me. dammit, i was doing so well.

the impact of hearing all those familiar words and songs sung right then, right there is too much. it sounds corny, sure, but the hours spent hanging my breathe onto every "give me life, give me pain, give me myself again" are still far too recent memories. the perfomance is as beautiful as expected, and i still manage to smile when she shakes her head along with the piano solo halfway through.

the soft last beat of the drum has just died when caton begins to play an intro i've heard close to a hundred times from rewinding and replaying it on my cheap walkman. i bump into gene with a "this.is.the.waitress." - no more needs to be said.

it rocked? it rolled? it was twisted? it was screech? noisy? grabbing? raw? flashy? jammin'? whatever it was, it had me throwing my hair about and grinning wider than i had teeth. it makes me want to get "i believe in peace, bitch" tattooed all over again, because the message is reinforced again and again when i hear the song.

tori grabs the microphone and breathes the final "wa-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-tre-e-e-esss" and i know this means the end of the set. sure enough she gets up, waves, throws kisses at us, engages in a grouphug with the band, and gets off the stage. needless to say, the crowd goes wild and stays that way for the 3-4 minutes before the band comes back to start up... precious things.

the perfect way to end a concert - have everyone floored by intense floaty vocals, a deep growling "grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrl" (complete with clawing up the legs and stomach) and you end up with an audience in love.

afterwards, gene looks at me and asks:
"is she always like this?"
"like what... good?"
"yeah?"
"yeah."