Now That I Have a Self...

[howeird]

The traffic gods were kind, and I remembered a painless back way to get from work to Consonance, and arrived an hour before concert time.

Dr. James was brilliant, singing several Dr, Jane songs, a couple of which I knew from the olden days. There was much audience interaction, including an ad lib which zapped johno for aiming his camera at didjiman who was aiming his camera at Dr. James. I didn't see if he also aimed it at John. The audience cracked up Dr. James when most of us, at the end of his piece on Nessie, made our hands and arms into Loch Ness monsters. didjiman got a picture or two of that.

He was followed by Alexander Adams, who uses a guitar as a percussion instrument, sings powerful songs with lots of beat but not much melody, and for one number he picked up an electric violin and sawed at it mercilessly in a poor man's copycat of The Devil Went Down to Georgia. He tried very very hard, but once again the number was big on beat, tiny on melody, and fell just short for me. His voice is beautiful, he carries a tune superbly, I just wasn't impressed with the material.

For those who know the story but have not seen these guys lately, they are most definitely men.

Next up was the international GoHs, Summer & Fall (Eva Van Daele-Hunt & Crystal Blum) from Germany. It took them about half an hour to set up. They seemed to have no clue about microphones. As soon as they started their first number I was glad I'd moved from the front of the hall to the back. I found their voices grating, and they completely lost me when one of them picked up a sax and played an off-key set of notes which I'm sure was supposed to have been a fanfare of sorts. It hurt. As soon as the number was over I was out of there like a shot. I will not be buying their CD.

Plans for tomorrow:
P.O. (pick up a couple of eBay purchases)
Nails
Consonance by 2:00

Comments

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

That's very strange. I've seen Summer and Fall several times in Germany, and they have lovely voices and are quite at home with their instruments. I wonder what was wrong?

[howeird]

From other reviews I've seen I was surprised to. There's a lung-eating virus going around here (I had it a month ago and still can't take a deep breath without coughing), so maybe that accounts for the harsh voices. The sax was a case of (a) I am allergic to saxophones, (b) it was a part which should have been played by a French Horn (their Spartans number, if you are familiar with it) and (c) she didn't warm up the instrument so the reed was probably stiff.

They're doing other things tonight and tomorrow, I'll try again.

Summer and Fal

[patoadam]

I think the Summer and Fall concert may have been over-amplified at first. Suggest you check out their three mp3s in your Consonance Songbook CD: Rain on Berlin, Die Puppen (there's a translation in the songbook), and Follow My Love. If you don't like these, then you don't like their music. Chacun à son goût.

Re: Summer and Fal

[howeird]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give it a listen this weekend.

Re: Summer and Fall

[howeird]

I just gave the three tunes a listen, and Rain on Berlin was very listenable, but that's just Summer singing with a male bass/baritone backup. Fall singing in Die Puppen hit me the same as the song I heard at the con, and Follow My Love also made me cringe slightly.

Having time to really listen, what I am hearing which sets me on edge is a singer who strains for notes at the edge of her range, and runs out of breath at the end of some phrases, straining again as she forgets about diaphragm support. This also throws off her intonation with the instruments and with the other singers.

I guess in this case it's Chanson à son goût. :-)