Someone else will surely go through the setlist and more details--many highlights, esp. when the theme seemed to be "Madmen In Improvisation" -- in moments such as Tim "abusing" piano strings and playing his guitar in a flailing wonder of righthanded motion... Neil? Well he was his own little miracle -- man, I love his guitar sound. "Suffer Never" was nothing to suffer about. I was high and weightless, I was transported, I was moving (well, okay, that had something to do with wending my way around the whole place and ending my view of the show from a lofty and prime location, heh).
Surprises included "I See Red," "I Got You" (which had lots of people singing, of course...and that wasn't the only song...of course)...
Ron Sexsmith, dear soul, is really talented, got some good material, vocally a mix (to me) of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dilan (of course, they are two of his favs)...deserves your utmost attention. Don't talk through his set, listen and he'll love you for it!
Gotta run now, HEY to Robert, Kayt, Angela, Cynthia, who I met for the first time, HEY HEY to all the rest of you whom I've had the great pleasure to meet and know in person before!
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The beginning:
Ron Sexsmith started about 9:00 and played for about 40 minutes (I think) -- just him and his acoustic guitar. (I saw him open up for Amy Mann about a month ago, when he also had a bass player and a drummer with him.) I felt kind of bad for him -- while the audience politely applauded him after each song, a large part of it talked through his entire set at a volume almost equal to his playing. I hadn't heard him at all before the Amy Mann show, and now after hearing him live twice I'm still not too impressed. I hope the songs come across better on the CD -- they (the songs) sounded an awful lot alike; maybe that would change with more familiarity, but I didn't hear anything that made me want to find out for sure. Part of the problem was the tinny sound of his guitar -- you couldn't hear the lower strings too well, and a lot of the bass runs as well as the middle tones were too mushy -- you could tell he was playing an acoustic guitar but couldn't pick out much in the way of distinct tones. Maybe it was the usual case of the opening act not having much or any time for a soundcheck?
Anyway, enough about that -- Neil and Tim's guitars didn't suffer the same problems. All of their instruments sounded great, both sound-wise and playing-wise. It's amazing that these two men can make such a full, musical sound -- they're more musical than most full bands. (And this isn't just the adoring ranting of yet another fan -- I'm 43 years old and played guitar, bass, and keyboards, and sang in a band for almost 7 years for a living.)>{? Let me say here that I'd never been much of a Tim fan. I've yet to learn to appreciate most Enz or Tim solo stuff, although I loved his contributions to Woodface (with, of course, the except of "All I Ask") and Finn (the album.) Having said that, I loved every second of his performance at the Paradise -- he looked like a semi-out-of-control madman for much of the night, bopping around the stage with his guitar and headset, sitting at the drums (actually bass drum along with a conga drum, bongos, and assorted percussion) with his eyes closed, leading Neil on several (apparently) unplanned improvs on song endings, sitting at the piano, or as Marg mentioned, doing wild-man percussion on the actual piano strings. The best part of it was that he was obviously enjoying every second of it, and put his entire being into the performance.
I've seen some comments on the list in recent weeks about Tim's supposedly declining voice -- don't believe it for a second! He was in superb voice all night, and hit every high note without a problem.
Neil also sounded great as usual -- teriffic vocals and guitar playing, especially on Suffer Never and Kiss the Road. It was really interesting seeing Neil play so well all night, while constantly trying to keep track of Tim, watching to see when he was ready to end a song, or go off on another improvisation. He held it together really well -- the performance and combination of the two personalities was perfect. My favorite moment of the evening (among many) was in the second? encore; the crowd was still cheering and making noise when Neil hit the opening of Last Day in June, and suddenly the crowd went silent.
All in all, an absolutely FABULOUS show.
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