Tag: ani difranco

pixie

maybe you don’t like your job
maybe you didn’t get enough sleep
well, nobody likes their job
nobody got enough sleep
maybe you just had
the worst day of your life
but, you know, there’s no escape
and there’s no excuse
so just suck up and be nice

pixie – ani difranco

mancano poche ore al concerto di Ani al C-Side, proprio da li’ nel 1998 Ani aveva tenuto uno showcase e da quell’anno e’ tornata annualmente in Italia, dal 1999 io l’ho vista 15 volte. In questi anni siamo cresciuti, e l’atteggiamento e le aspettative di fronte ad un suo show sono cambiate, onestamente stamattina parlandone non avrei saputo cosa aspettarmi, certo immagino che musicalmente non sara’ un concerto molto diverso da quello del novembre scorso a Torino anche se nel frattempo e’ uscito l’ennesimo disco, e Andrew Bird che ha aggiunto un tocco prezioso aprira’ il concerto e idealmente dovrebbe suonare in qualche pezzo.
Tuttavia per una serie di cose che non mi va di spiegare qui, per quanto abbia il biglietto in mano, in questo momento vorrei girare la macchina ed essere altrove. A volte per riuscire a star dietro a tutte le cose che succedono in un giorno bisognerebbe sdoppiarsi e forse non basterebbe.

Questa volta non postero’ una recensione in inglese del concerto di Ani ieri a Milano, come ho fatto in passato, giusto poche righe per dire che e’ stato comunque un bel concerto, l’acustica dello Smeraldo e il fatto di star seduti e tranquilli per un set acustico, seppur con l’energia che la contraddistingue. Stare sola sul palco per un’ora e dieci e’ come essere sotto una lente di ingrandimento, puoi cogliere meglio ogni sfumatura, ogni espressione, ogni emozione e forse meno sorrisi che in passato, ma anche ogni errore, e quindi forse per chi l’ha gia’ vista come me un po’ di volte, sono risaltati alcune perdite di orientamento un po’ troppo al di la’ dal classico dimenticarsi l’inizio di una strofa (es. su marrow).

Cio’ non toglie che su altri pezzi (es. l’apertura su names dates and times o su evolve) sia stata assolutamente eccellente. Una performance quindi magari non costante, non da concerto perfetto, secondo me attribuibile a condizioni psicofisiche non ottimali, ma d’altronde e’ qualcosa da mettere in conto per una persona che suona tante date e con un repertorio vastissimo e con pezzi nuovi e forse

l’imperfezione ha un suo lato positivo o per lo meno umano :

we get a little further from perfection

each year on the road

i guess that’s what they call character

i guess that’s just the way it goes

better to be dusty than polished

like some store window mannequin

Ani: Imperfectly

ok let me take a slight detour from the recent tales from the front row, it’s about some thoughts that have to do also with religion and the little folksinger, read with open mind or just ignore it, and believe me it’s just personal thoughts and hope you’re not offended at this putting close sacred and profane.
So i was at mass this morning (yes i’m roman catholic in case you wonder) and there was this reading from the Genesis where God looks for Adam and asks “where are you?”, the priest was commenting it recalling a story from the hebrew tradition (that i already read in a very interesting book by Martin Buber :”The Way of Man : According to the Teaching of Hasidism”) where a religious guide from Russia is put in jail and his guard asks him about what was God supposed to ask to Adam, if God knows everything why had He to ask Adam where he was, the religious replied that God indeed is talking to you, is asking to you where you are, what have you done up to now with your life, as an example He says: see it’s 46 years since you’re here, so where are you ?, the guard was higly surpised because that was his exact age.

Now let’s go more down to earth, this is a question that you and me can ask ourselves too, and one thing i’ve been admiring of Ani DiFranco is her doing so much in her life, touring, never stopping, fighting all the battles she believes in, first as a person and also in her songs you can read lines such as : did you do ? did you do all you could ? or how could you do nothing and say, i’m doing my best or again, one of my favorite : you’ve got your whole life to do something and that’s not very long. That’s it, think where you’re now in respect of your life and not just stay there but do what you’ve got to do.

looking at referrer stats i noticed an increasing number of visitors coming here because interested in Ani Difranco in Italy, no wonder since i rank as #1 in google for sucha matter , you got to the right place and i’m gonna post in this weblog first impressions, reviews and fresh materials on the forthcoming shows of the little folksinger, in the meantime they’re in enough good shape to feed the Ani part of this website.
I’ll be at Modena, Milan and Rome shows along with a bunch of good folks from the italian Ani mailing list, they’ll cover also the Florence date.