Setlist: Say Hello 2 Heaven, Wooden Jesus, Call Me a Dog, Your Saviour, Stardog Champion, Stargazer, Seasons, Jump into the Fire, Four Walled World, I'm a Mover, Pushin' Forward Back, Hunger Strike, Quicksand, Heartshine, River of Deceit, Holy Roller, Reach Down.
Encore Break: Man of Golden Words/Comfortably Numb, Times of Trouble, Achilles' Last Stand, Missing, Fascination Street, War Pigs. Second Encore Break: All Night Thing.
It was an event I never expected to be able to experience, an actual Temple of the Dog show. After 90 minutes online for Ticketmaster the day they went on sale, I wound up with first row in a 300 section behind the stage. And truth be told, I wasn't so happy about that. (Especially day of show, when a guy I ran into told me he got a floor seat that day.) But I ended up really happy with my seat -- section 300 is the highest level in the arena, but it also juts out about halfway over section 100. So I had a nice view from behind that allowed me to see the interplay between the musicians, particularly Stone and Jeff.
This was something of a strange show for me. Questions just kept popping in my head. Everything from nonsensical to realistic. With the exception of one song, the music didn't really wash over me the way I feel like it usually does. It was a strange sensation.
I wondered what kind of reaction each member was having to the audience reaction? Did they feel less response than the waves of enthusiasm that radiate from Pearl Jam or Soundgarden crowds? Did they notice at all? Were they upset that covers -- most notably "Achilles' Last Stand" by Led Zeppelin -- seemed to get more of a reaction? Did the members of Pearl Jam compare and contrast Chris and Eddie as front men in their heads? Is that what some of the knowing nods were about?
The question hanging in the air was the one I didn't ask, namely would Vedder be there to sing his vocal portion of their big hit, "Hunger Strike"? He wasn't, but I didn't care and I loved the way they handled it. Cornell pointed the microphone at the audience, inducing them to sing Eddie's role. Let's face it, legions of Pearl Jam fans have longed to do that for decades.
There was a great story about how Ament had created a prop for the film Singles, a five-track cassette that had names of fictitious songs on it. Cornell told us he resolved to write a song based on each title. And that's how "Seasons" came to be -- that would be the only song of the night that I disappeared into. It reminds me so specifically of that era and where I was and what I was doing at that time.
Later we got a great surprise, another of the songs based on that cassette prop called "Missing" that had apparently only been played publicly once before. My question for that one -- "Was I the only one who loved that more than yet another cover of 'Comfortably Numb'"? I was truly grooving on that one.
At some point my questions got more mundane. Would the glass barriers everyone was leaning on so heavily fall off before or after the floor seemingly moving below my feet would give way? It was a very real concern, I started standing further back against my chair. And wasn't Mother Love Bone's "Holy Roller" a fantastic 1-2 punch with Temple of the Dog's "Reach Down" to end the first part of the set?
For those who don't know the boy named Seu, here are the facts. I generally consider Anderson my favorite director. In his film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Jorge plays Pele dos Santos -- a helping hand on Jacques Cousteau-esque Zissou's crew who often sits by his lonesome and sings David Bowie sings in Portugese while playing an acoustic guitar. Obviously a very cool cat.
And that's what Jorge did for us too. He was decked out in a costume from the movie, or at least an incredible facsimile. I didn't really expect to hear absorbing stories, charmingly spoken in halting English. Like the one about getting a phone call from Anderson asking him to playing Pele and his bemusement over why the director would want him to portray a soccer player.
Then they got down to the nitty gritty. Seu was asked whether he knew David Bowie's music. Well, he kind of confused him with the other blond rocker -- Billy Idol. But he did know Bowie's cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "America" and the No. 1 hit "Let's Dance." Anderson sent him more of Bowie's songs. As Jorge explained it to us, "'Changes' was the one that changed everything."
It's difficult to describe how hearing a song you know in one language sung in another in that atmosphere can affect you. It's the same, but it's different. Seu admitted in doing translations, there was a lot of paraphrasing. Except when it came to "Starman," as he utilized Nenhum de Nos' word-for-word version. Anyway, the music is so powerful, I could feel David Bowie in the room, I could feel Seu Jorge in the room. It was almost ethereal and very visceral.
He told us more tales of being on The Life Aquatic set, how he didn't know the star-studded cast by name, but he'd point to them and recall them being in particular movies. Anjelica Huston wound up playing translator for him, telling him Anderson's directions in French.
But we didn't have to speak the same language to feel the kick in the gut Seu experienced when David Bowie died last January and Jorge's father passed away the very next day. He dedicated "Life on Mars" -- already my favorite adaptation -- to the both of them, adding he knows his father is now on Mars. It was captivating and life-affirming and a bunch of other adjectives that haven't been invented yet. After a tough week, it sounds silly to say, but it did restore my faith in humanity. We're all in this world together.
It's hard to convey in any language how powerful the man and his guitar delivered Bowie's chestnuts. Through the songs he adapted for The Life Aquatic and some others, the likes of "Space Oddity," "Rebel Rebel," "Five Years" and "Queen Bitch," he just resonated. He wasn't overdramatic or artificial in the slightest, he provided an outlet for Bowie's message with charm and grace.
And then there was Kristin Chenoweth on Saturday night at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in a completely different show focused on the Broadway baby's love of the Great White Way. The approach may have been different, but the same reverence came through. The vocal spitfire performed songs she's known for, ones she's always loved and selected tracks from her latest CD, The Art of Elegance.
Over the course of her storied career, Chenoweth has been in A Chorus Line three times -- as Diana (with hair spray-painted black), Maggie and Val. While performing the latter in the Bible Belt, "Dance 10, Looks 3" was modified to "boobs and butt" because "tits and ass" were words that couldn't be uttered.
Then there was her take on her Wickedly beloved "Popular." Chenoweth started off by presenting the song in different languages, but Glinda's original connotation was quite different from the bucket of laughs she earned with mannerisms and inflection on certain words (personality dialysis?) that certainly recalled the president-elect. Later she did a take on her hero's Madeline Kahn's "I'm Tired" from Blazing Saddles, a reminder that she forsook a dream role -- Kahn's part in Young Frankenstein on Broadway -- in order to be Olive Snook in one of my all-time favorite TV shows, Pushing Daisies.
She tugged on our heart strings a lot. The song for her parents, "Fifty Years" was punctuated by a pair of stories -- first that her parents had been at her first two shows on this two-week engagement, soaking up the spotlight when they were introduced. And then on the third night, they were not there -- they were across the street at Hamilton. Kristin laughed that it was just like when the Von Trapp Family Singers are introduced at the end of The Sound of Music. They were gone. When the poignant ballad was over, she thanked her birth mother as well, a petite blonde who happened to be sitting with her daughter one row ahead of me.
"A House Is Not a Home" has become one of Chenoweth's trademark songs over the years, and even she didn't have a dry eye when she finished belting it out. I don't know her, but I certainly felt as though I did as she took seemingly every word, every syllable to heart. She felt just as strongly and delivered just as passionately the usually male vocal on "Bring Him Home" from Les Miserables.
Speaking of Kristin's persona shining through, she apologized (though she needn't have had to) for getting religious on Sandi Patty's "Upon This Rock," bringing out Furman University singers for the crowd-pleasing "Jesus song." "For you atheists, it'll be over in about four minutes," she quipped. She sipped on a 7-11 Big Gulp through the first act, but what she really had me at was "I had Chick-Fil-A today."
Chenoweth had a special guest each night of the run. Ours was very special indeed -- Kelli O'Hara, who bested her buddy at last year's Tony Awards. "Oklahoma" seemed like an appropriate and fun duet since they both hail from that state and studied with the same vocal teacher.
The second act of the show gave a big part of the spotlight to her friend and music director, Mary-Mitchell Campbell, performing on the piano right behind Kristin all night. After all the musicians on the stage cracked everyone up with "I'm Not a Diva," Chenoweth and Campbell beautifully warbled Dolly Parton's "Little Sparrow" and described creating their emotional version of Don Henley's "The Heart of the Matter" on a day in which there had been a terrorist attack.
And it was all capped by the return of the Furman singers for Lady Antebellum's "I Was Here" and then Kristin, microphone in her hand but down at her side, belting "Smile" -- do I know this most from Charlie Chaplin or Eric Clapton? No matter, because now I know it most from her -- to the rafters.
Through some eagle-eyed maneuvering, I picked up the last signed copy of her autobiography before the show and getting that and her new CD signed seemed to be an impressive ploy when Chenoweth came out and graciously gave everyone a less-easily-discernible scribble after the show. Before working her way through the throng, not speaking in the chilly night air, she excitedly jumped up and down and clapped as she came out the stage door -- mirroring the actions of almost everyone waiting for her.
When I got back to Penn Station, I heard the Muzak version "Moon River." Nice symmetry, but Kristin definitely wore it better. But a nice cap to a pretty great week after all.
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