Tanya at the ollywood Athletic Club in Hollywood, CA November 9, 1997
that virany chick reports:
hey y'all out there....
(and worshipful greetings to the dewy-one if she's still about)
i thought i'd share my tanya donelly show-going experience with people who actually know who she is. (if i have to answer the question, "who's tanya?" even one more time, i swear, i'll splat.)
last sunday, tanya and mates hit the hollywood athletic club for a show to promote the new album. the last concert i'd gone to was something out of the 80's -- i think it was bobby brown, i'm ashamed to say. and since i was actually a fan of belly (i was never a new edition fan) the prospect of this concert had me AMPED.
the opening band was black lab, from the bay area. pretty decent music, though the crowd didn't seem to get into it.
i was really surprised when tanya came out onstage. for one thing, the hollywood athletic club is small enough that this was what you'd call an intimate li'l gathering. me and the guy i went with (jason, the mighty mighty) were about ten feet away from ms. donelly herself. so, the whole thing was pretty cool.
she came out all alone, wearing a little spangley-sequiny thing and brown, er, tightpants. i forget what they're called. she picked up the, whatchamacallit, non-electric guitar (sorry, i know no technicalese) and did a nifty little acoustic "The Bees." That was the only song off "King" that she did all night. i wish i'd snagged a set list, but of the older stuff, she jammed on "dusted" and "low red moon" and did an acoustic "feed the tree" during an encore.
obviously the majority of songs were straight off the new album. she played all of the awesome tracks -- "bum," "lantern," "bright light," "breathe around you," "pretty deep," "acrobat," that song about burning... i can't think of titles off-hand just right now.
best song: the second encore cover of the zombies' classic "time of the season." dean did all that "aaah"-ing, and the instrumental interlude of the song gave tanya a chance to flutter aimlessly about. this was about the time when jason said to me, "hey, did you notice the sexual tension between tanya and the bassist?" will beg, borrow, or steal for a recording of that cover. awesome, truly.
tanya really won over the crowd, though i doubt that would ever be hard for her to do. she had a great rapport with the audience between songs. after the first few, someone in the front yelled, "Number 7!" she replied, "Number 7? What the hell does that mean?" and laughingly added, "I hope you don't have children."
because jason (the mighty mighty) is pretty tall, he mentioned to me that he liked tanya's shoes. so, i dared him to say so. naturally, jason being the mighty mighty, he yelled out, "Your shoes are cute!" between songs, and tanya said, "i think so too. and they're comfortable." they were these cute red numbers, from what i could see. (i, unfortunately, am not vertically endowed as jason is.) very dorothy-esque.
nice emotive moment when tanya dedicated a song "to the person who changed my life... Kristin Hersh." which somehow made me all drippy and teary-eyed. nifty moment.
also liked it when someone in the crowd yelled, "play human!" and tanya whispered back, "eventually."
best thing about it was that this concert was totally free for jason and me, thanks to the good folks at the local KUCI 88.9. support your college radio station, and it comes back.
it's that good karma thing.
okay. just thought i'd gloat. =)
toodlies,
virany