FORTH GO

We unfortunately missed DJ Spooky and Los Lobos while on vacation. We gave our tickets to friends who said both events were very good.

Friday night we saw Tift Merritt and Nanci Griffith. I have to admit I’m not a big fan of music with so much “twang” in it. Nor do I like sit-down popular-music concerts for two reasons: you can’t move around like at a club and live music isn’t mixed as cleanly as a studio production, so you can’t make out the lyrics as easily, for instance (though if I were a real fan I’d know all the lyrics already). Nonetheless, both half-concerts were well done and enjoyable.

Tift Merritt got off to a rocky start. The band entered the unlit stage and Tift walked right off the front of it and fell about four feet. She jumped right back up and got to the music, after suggesting that the auditorium provide lighting next time when the banding is walking out. After attending classes at UNC (and almost graduating), she was obviously excited about playing at Memorial Hall and added a couple of local interest anecdotes to her performance. The band was very good with several impressive instrumental stretches. Merritt herself showed her musical range by alternating between guitar, harmonica, tambourine and piano.

In constrast to the “cross-over country” of Tift Merritt, Nanci Griffith’s portion of the concert was pure “activist folk” music. Every song had a story about who wrote it and when and why and who often performed it. Unfortunately, the live performance mixing that obscures lyrics is doubly harsh to folksingers, who so value the lyrics. 50-something Griffith came across as an old pro confident enough to spread credit and the spotlight to the rest of her talented band.

Both performers noted how quiet the crowd was. I don’t know if was the venue (the sit-and-watch seating), the reserved audience (maybe the “wine and cheese crowd” from the Dean Dome) or the disparity of the performers (splitting the audience between young and old or between country and folk).

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 9th, 2005 at 12:26 pm and is filed under Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.