Welcome to the blogger-sphere, Andrew

Check out Sr. Stuntcow, a talented artist, a great person.

That's all!

Almost persuaded...

I'm on the fence, and Tina almost pulled me over to her side (wait till end of "Women's News").

The Real LIVE Thing

2/8/08 - “She put it DOWN that night”

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to see the lovely Ms. Jill Scott at the equally lovely art-deco Paramount Theater in Oakland. During the Friday concert she picked some great tracks from her library, often segueing from new songs back to old classics, each complementing the other, and all *ridiculously* better live than the studio cuts. Through a near perfectly paced set list (2hrs flew by!), Jill led the always-tight FatBack Taffy through the gamut of rock to blues to touching ballardy– busting out beyond the lazy categorization of “neo-soul”. With witty, sincere, sometimes hilarious spoken interludes between each song, Jill crafted an entertaining, thoughtful observation of modern, mature love (and, to be frank, sex.)

As y’all know, Jill above all is a talented storyteller, and one noteworthy example of this for me was the live version of “My Love”– already a touching song, made more-so by a spoken breakdown that recast the song not just as a simple plea for a love-lost, but a powerful re-declaration of “self-worth-found”. To quote the woman, it was “beautifully human” moment.

Actually, it was a beautiful night all around. Jill looked the definition of “grown and sexy” in a red afro, black empire-waist dress, gold necklace and killer strappy heels. The horn section not only sounded tight, but looked cute doing their little two-steps, and the lighting design this tour was impressive.

In the end, Jilly from Philly drew an adoring crowd of young, old, gay, straight, black, white, yellow, brown. That’s one mixed-up funky Family Reunion and I’ll *most definitely* be at the next one ;-)

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I wish I had the exact setlist, but I know it included: "The Real Thing", "Gimme" (Wow! A rare gem from "Live:Experience 826+") ; "Come See Me"; "Whenever You're Around" (w/ the better than album vrs. guitar solo); "Only You"; "Slowly, Surely" (which I think got a bluesy-revision that slowed deliciously down with each verse); "Do You Remember"; "How It Make You Feel" (and later, its counterpart "We Need You"); "Breathe"; "Crown Royal" ("Not going to take one sip... even tho it looks good, smells good... aw fuck it!"); "Epiphany" (which I did NOT think she'd do live); "My Love"; "Wanna Be Loved"; "The Way"; "He Loves Me (Lyzel in E Flat)";"Golden" (thankfully this time done "straight", without the disco-breakdown from last tour); "Hate On Me" (you KNOW those two back-to-back had the crowd grooving and sweating); and finally a beautiful poetry/sing-along piece as the encore that's floating around on YouTube.