Can I drag this up to brag about two shows I've been to lately? Mike Keneally and Wende
First of all the show by Wende. Wende is a Dutch singer and she sings whatever the **** she wants basically. She started out by singing French chansons and has a new, more poppy album out now. Now this concert was one in a series of concerts with a different concept than usual. The concerts are held in a church and part of the show is that the artist talks about his or her inspiration for the songs too.
Wende decided to experiment while at this concert, by not styling her show.
There were no lights, except for the regular church lights. She wore her favourite shirt that she wears at home all the time. And instead of, as she calls it, 'getting in a bubble' -meaning that she gets in a sort of focussed mood and gets completely absorbed in her songs until the moment she's finished- she decided to snap out of it after a song, and just improvise the talking. So we really got to see the real Wende. Which was amazing. I loved it.
She asked the public questions like: "what part of the lyrics of this song do you like most? Or do you dance to this song at home? No? You should, that would make me happy."
Everything she said and the way she sang her songs totally captivated me.
The only downside was that for her this experiment wasn't that great. While she was playing her last song she completely forgot what she was doing. She just stopped playing the piano and stopped singing mid-sentence and proclaimed: 'I'm out of it. I'm sorry.' and then she asked: 'What do you want me to do now? Should I continue with this song? Or play another one?' She ended up playing the same song again and it was wonderful. For her, this concept and experiment were not a success. For me, it was. It was so honest. You felt so much closer to the person behind the music. It somehow felt more real.
And then the other show I saw. My boyfriend and I wanted to go to the Mattheus Passion. But not very surprisingly this was completely sold out on the day we wanted to go. So we had to make a change of plans. I decided to take a look at the other venues in town and discovered that in a venue way too small was playing: the Mike Keneally Band. When we got there I think there were about 40 or 50 people and I think our presence lowered the average by quite a bit, lol.
Now if you're unfamiliar with Mike Keneally, don't be ashamed. I was too. Until I did some research and found out that he was a stunt guitarist for Frank Zappa! He used to play the most difficult guitar parts Frank Zappa composed. So at that moment I decided I had to go to this show. Well not exactly at that moment, I listened to some songs too. Anyway, Mike Keneally doesn't just play the guitar, he can play the piano too. Heck, he can even play the piano and play the guitar and sing in one song. Needless to say: this show was great. It was ****ing brilliant. Now I had wanted to write that the thing that I found best about this show was that the band seemed to have so much fun on stage, they improvised, they laughed, they were so much at ease. And yet they rocked!
But then I thought: no, people will probably want to hear about how complicated the songs were, how difficult the bass lines, about the climaxes and the stylistic diversity. But I don't know ape**** about that. So I decided to look up what a reviewer said about this concert. He probably knows what they do better than I know, right? Guess what? The guy mentioned in his review how the band seemed very relaxed...XD