2003-02-09 - 11:56 p.m.

Aimee Mann vs. the jackasses

Last night the Manager, Lily and myself saw Aimee Mann at the Egg in Albany. The Manager and I have been fans of Aimee for years - Lily was sort of along for the ride.

I think this was the fifth time I've seen her live. The first time I saw Aimee was in 1991 (I think) right after Til Tuesday had dissolved under pressure from its record company. The last time was in 1998 or 1997 (again, unsure of the exact date) when she played at a small venue near Saratoga Springs. This last show was something of a disaster - for some reason the turnout was tiny. I would say that there may have been less than 150 people present, but Aimee's career was in something of a trough then - this was pre-Magnolia. In spite of the small crowd, Aimee put on a great show; in fact, I've never seen her put on a bad one.

In this case, the Egg Theater was just about sold out, but it didn't seem like a huge venue - probably about 1,000 seats.

The opening act was Duncan Sheik, who's best known for the hit "Barely Breathing" in 1996. While Sheik seemed talented, I found his songs kind of meandering and tuneless. I had a hard time focusing my attention while he was singing. Apparently he was having problems focusing too - during his six song set he had at least two false starts. At one point he needed to stop to re-tune his guitar, and in another song he got lost and forgot the words. He seemed to take it all in stride with good humor. Maybe he was feeling a little odd because the last time he'd performed at the Egg was when he was a kid at jazz band camp, some 20 years before. Really!

Aimee Mann came on after a short intermission, and she immediately started to rock out. The main focus of her set seemed to be her most recent CD, "Lost In Space" in fact I think she played most of the songs on the CD. She also played a good number of songs from her previous album, "Bachelor #2" but she performed very little from her first two solo albums, and only one song from her Til Tuesday catalog.

She seemed to be in a curious mood, much more chatty than she usually is. Previously I've heard her talk ruefully about her old boyfriends, but this time she actually did a song to "honor" one of them. She called out Duncan Sheik to help her cover the Oasis song "Wonderwall." I find it hard to fathom what Aimee would see in one of the loutish Gallagher brothers, and she seemed mystified by it herself. Duncan Sheik sounded better on this song than he had on any of the songs in his set, so maybe his problem is his choice of material.

One of the things she mentioned between songs was that the band was operating on very little sleep - they'd been used to going to bed at 3 AM, but this particular morning they'd had to get up at 5 AM for a TV show taping. The show was professional throughout, but Aimee and the bandmembers seemed a little punchy, especially at the end.

At one point, Aimee had the houselights turned up, and solicited requests from the audience. This seemed like an invitation to trouble - putting the audience in charge is sort of like the inmates running the asylum. As might be expected, one jackass had to shout out "Free Bird!" However, Aimee had a trap waiting for this particular putz, a rotund guy in his mid-20s wearing a black turleneck - she dragged him up on stage to help the band sing the Lynyrd Skynyrd song "Sweet Home Alabama." The heckler seemed much more humble once he was up on stage, but it turned out that he didn't have a bad voice, even if it was a little high-pitched for his size.

Let me tell you, it made me feel real old to have to explain to Lily what the significance of "Free Bird" was, a Southern Rock guitar anthem that Skynyrd stretched to twelve minutes on their live album. I saw innumerable frat boys drive themselves into a frenzy when this was played at keg parties in the 1970s.

A little later Aimee caught another jackass. A heckler yelled that if she played "The Other End of the Telescope" he'd do her the favor of singing backup. Her response to this offer was: "What do *I* get out of the deal?" But she called him up on stage anyway. This guy seemed much more of a thorough jerk, and his voice was really terrible. After he nearly threw the whole band off key the sound mixer turned his mike down to almost nothing.

Probably fazed by lack of sleep, Aimee let the show go on longer than usual - all told they played 19 songs. The finale was my current favorite song, "Deathly," which made me glad that I hadn�t shouted it TOO loud when she was asking for requests. Sadly the band seemed a little drained, so the song lacked the power it had on the disk. Well, you can't have everything. It was still a great show, and as a special bonus Aimee got to put two jackasses in their place. With some satisfaction she can say to herself: "Two down, millions to go."