cat power & dirty delta blues live at the fillmore

cat power and her extremely proficient backing band, dirty delta blues, absolutely nailed otis redding tonight. i've written before about how well chan's voice - really a remarkable instrument - suits otis's music but you can hear for yourself below.

cat power - remember me (otis redding)

all told it was good performance. it took chan a while to warm up, perhaps, either that or her vocal mix was low for the first handful of songs, but by the time "(i can't get no) satisfaction" rolled around (along with the otis cover this energized & soulful nod to the stones was the set highlight), about a third of the way in, she had found her groove. two remarkable things about this show and then we'll move on:

i) no one, despite widespread familiarity with the music, sang along. and not for want of motive. ms. power if you please has a habit, reminiscent, to me at least, of dylan, whom i saw perform about seven years ago at the augusta (maine) civic center, and the way he tinkers with the arrangements of his songs, or the cadences at which he sings them, until they're almost unrecognizable. in dylan's case i assumed it was a way for him to keep the music fresh (understandable after forty odd years of performing); perhaps chan's reasons are the same. she doesn't completely rearrange the music, though, but she does alter it enough to thwart much audience participation. not that it's always entirely easy to decipher what she's saying in the first place.

2) more remarkable than the actual songs - for some of which either her attention or mine occasionally wandered - was how vulnerable she can appear. there's nothing deified about her; & aside from that stunning voice, this is probably a large part of what attracts us (me) to her and the music: she doesn't try to hide or shy away from imperfection. this evening she wore a pair of ill-fitting pants (and, as holly pointed out, what seemed to be an ill-fitting bra) and much of the show - and her attention - was spent tugging them upwards, back into place. on one or two occasions she used both hands to grasp the material from her general crotch area and, buttressed by an excuse me smile, yank - which, though it may read untoward, was an utterly endearing moment. she is also a fairly unaccomplished dancer. her moves are idiosyncratic at best and it takes a certain amount of comfort & confidence to put them on public display. or take the transparent gesture of self-censor when she sneaked behind a tall stack of speakers near the wing of the stage for a cigarette. consistently throughout the night, through her music and through these all-too recognizable behaviors, chan exposed herself to our collective judgment, and those of us in attendance tended to love her for it.

all right, enough already. here are a couple of songs she played tonight, "lived in bars" and the above-mentioned, though here stripped down "satisfaction," and a third track culled from an old solo performance at western washington university, just because i like it.

cat power - lived in bars
cat power - (i can't get no) satisfaction
cat power - sea of love (live)

also, just as a precautionary note for any of you planning on taking in a show on the rest of cat power's current tour, arrive late. the opening act, addiquit (no, i will not provide a link) either won a door prize on her way to see tonight's show herself and got to perform or else is a working, compensated musician and i'm in the wrong business.