Lene Lovich: Live at Joe's Pub 12 September 2005 By Woland To celebrate the release of her first album in 16 years, Lene Lovich played a show at Joe's Pub in New York City. Having been to two of Lene's much larger shows twice in Boston in the early 1980s and then once in New York in 1990, it was a treat to see her in a much more intimate setting. Joe's Pub is a small but gorgeous venue that holds only 161 patrons. There are tables surrounding the small stage, and it's attracted a wide range of performers including David Byrne, Alicia Keys, Nora Jones, and the Kronos Quartet. After the crowd had settled into their seats and ordered their drinks (and in some cases a full dinner), the lights dimmed shortly after 9:30....and the crowd cheered as Les Chappell stepped onto the stage. Somewhat surprisingly, Les ignored his guitar and stepped over to the keyboard. A few minutes later Lene appeared and the gig was on. Dressed very much like the photos on her newest CD, Shadows and Dust, Lene looked great. Her trademark braids flowed out of a complex turban/headwrap. She was wearing a multilayered black dress that looked purple under the lights, and the outside of her sleeves were covered with overly-large buttons -- or maybe they were bracelets of sorts. As you can imagine, the crowd roared when Lene stepped onto the stage. And then came the music. Les started playing the keyboard and it took a few measures before it became clear that this was the intro to NEVERLAND. Les played slowly and then Lene began to sing. It was a gorgeous, slow rendition and a song I'd never heard her play live. A great first choice, Neverland really fit well with the intimate surroundings of the club. After the song ended and the applause died down, Lene shouted, "New Song!" and then launched into GHOST STORY. Sounding like something that might have fit into her second album, Flex, Ghost Story brought smiles to the crowd as everyone listened carefully to catch all the lyrics. After Ghost Story ended, Lene introduced Les as "a very important person. VERY important, but not crazy!" Les moved over to guitar and the pair launched into CRAZE, another track from Shadows and Dust. This is a really fun song with Les joining in with Lene with shouts of, "Craze, new craze." Again, I've got to say that Craze would fit nicely on Flex. If you like Bird Song, You Can't Kill Me, Joan, and all the other terrific songs from Flex, you're going to love Shadows and Dust. When the last chords of Craze faded, Les moved back to the keyboard and Lene told the audience, "that was a fairly new song, so now we have a fairly old song." and then she added that it's from (or maybe inspired by?) "an obscure French movie." Unbelievably, she began to sing the gorgeous OH SEASONS, OH CASTLES. This great song wasn't released on any of her albums, but can be heard on various "Best Of" compilations. This is a very delicate song, and it was sung beautifully to the small and appreciative crowd, most of whom had probably never heard it before. "The next song is about reincarnation, but most people think it's about cosmetic surgery." With that quip from Lene, Les hit the keyboard and the crowd instantly recognized the opening of SLEEPING BEAUTY. A few cheers rang out and Lene began to sing, again a bit slowly which seemed to fit the mood of the whole night. The crowd loved it, even clapping rhythmically before the lyrics, "This twilight seems like an eternity, the changes I go through are hurting me, do we become what we deserve to be?" Les was hitting the keyboard very hard. I've got to say that I'm not sure keyboards are Les's main instrument. The whole night he seemed to be trying very hard to get the notes just right and looked like he was afraid he was going to screw things up. But no worries, he played nearly flawlessly for the whole show. When Sleeping Beauty ended someone shouted, "Wonderful One!" and Lene laughed and replied, "Not tonight!" That seemed to really loosen things up and for the remainder of the night members of the audience would call out a song request, or tell Lene she looked or sounded great, or to come back soon. Like I said, it was a very different experience being in such a small space when my strongest memory of seeing Lene live was on the huge stage at the Bradford Ballroom in Boston in 1981 with 2000 screaming 17-25 year olds dancing madly, a full band including Thomas Dolby at the keyboards, and an infatuated disc jockey from WBCN broadcasting to the entire North East. Next up was REMEMBER, another new song from Shadows and Dust. This album seems to have a few songs that are almost like short stories, short films, snapshots. This is one of them. Sung in a minor key, it's a beautiful love song that starts with the haunting lyrics, "In the rush of the crowd on the steps / leading out to the market place / where two lovers could meet hidden deep by the swell of the mob / we agree to dissolve, disappear, to risk all for the sake of love / I only know -- you didn't show." OUCH. Great song, beautiful performance. What happened next was astonishing. After finishing the ballad Remember, Lene said, "This one's not about me, because I'm a vegetarian" and launched into THE INSECT EATER, a new song that was without a doubt the highlight of the evening. As this 6+ minute performance unfolded I looked around the room and saw everyone laughing, clapping, even gasping. She didn't sing The Insect Eater so much as perform it as a complete bit of musical theater. The first line of The Insect Eater is "Earwigs in my fridge at midnight put me in a dancing mood" and it gets even better from there. A fully developed story song, it describes the adventures of Dracula's assistant Renfield. Alternately singing, speaking lines as Renfield and Dracula, and with Les chanting "earwigs!" in the background, Lene hopped about the stage and acted out scenes as she sang lines like "I'm bouncing down the high street now, shopping for new clothes / I buy a pair of gothic shoes, showing off my toes" and "'As he wipes the blood from off his lips, he says with a simpering purr / That look of rigor mortis will soon be de rigueur.'" The woman to my left was laughing non-stop by the end of the song, a warm, wonderful laugh. When the song was over the room erupted into applause. I'd give anything to have a video of this performance. Giving everyone time to wipe up the drinks they'd spilled while listening to The Insect Eater, Les hit a few notes on the keyboard and a few people in the crowd shouted their approval as they recognized the opening of SPECIAL STAR. Lene's recorded this song at least twice, once really fast and once a lot slower. The live performance was the slow version, really nicely done. When the song ended people started to shout out, "Lucky Number!" and "New Toy!" and this time Lene didn't argue. She launched into LUCKY NUMBER and of course the whole room had a blast. Les was back on guitar and it was something very new to hear this song without any keyboards or drums. Lene has always extended Lucky Number when singing it live, but in this show instead of stretching and repeating the keyboard section she repeatedly sang "Something tells me my lucky number's gonna be changing soon" four or five times, each time singing it a little differently. It was a bit strange to hear this song sitting down instead of dancing, but there's really no room to move at Joe's Pub. Even Lene, who loves to run around the stage, was a little cramped and she did her best to add some physicality to her performance while standing on a tiny platform. After wrapping up Lucky Number Lene said the next song was very new and isn't even on the new album, that it's from a new film, a tiny wonderful little film called "Alpha Girls." Unfortunately the song itself wasn't so wonderful, and I'd say this was the only song in the whole show that didn't work. Lene's written more than a few songs that in a very broad sense can be categorized as "girl empowerment" tunes. Think of Say When and One in a Million on Stateless, or Joan on Flex, Maria on No Man's Land, and others. Sadly, Alpha Girls didn't seem to my ear to measure up to those and was a little too straightforward. My friend wrinkled her nose halfway through the song and I didn't disagree. Lene announced "Last Song!" and returned to her near-official closing number, HOME. Lene does a beautiful job with this song every time she sings it live and here it was no exception. Usually she stretches it out and uses the extra time as an opportunity to introduce the entire band. But here...well, there was no band to introduce. She sang the song super slowly at the beginning, practically spitting out the words "stick-ing-in-my-throat." It was a wonderful ending and Lene and Les left the stage, the audience waiting for the encores. But before they could continue, Les stepped up to the microphone and said, "is there a guitar tech in the house?" Everyone laughed, and it turned out that Les had broken a string. "I'm going to change a guitar string and then maybe we'll do another one." But before fixing the guitar he went back to the keyboard and hit some low rumbling notes. Hmmm, was this something new or was it the beginning of something familiar? With the first throaty yelp from Lene, everyone knew it was BIRD SONG. This has always been one of my favorite songs of hers, and she does a great job with it live. To be perfectly honest, Lene was having some trouble with the high notes at this gig and it really showed during Bird Song. I'm not sure if it was the end of a long night, or maybe she's just not in tip-top form since this was her first show in quite a while. Whatever the reason, it was a little tough for her on parts of this song. At the same time, the mid to low range plaintive calls were really powerful. It was great to hear Bird Song live again and a nice complement to the new song Remember that she sang earlier in the evening. Before Lene and Les could do their final encore, Les had to fix his guitar. He started playing some rumbling sounds from the keyboard and Lene walked over to join him. He showed her what keys to play and walked off the stage to do the repair. Lene looked at the keyboard as though it were an animal from another planet and tapped a few keys with her left hand. She bent down to look closely at each key, raised her right hand as though it were playing the sounds by magic, and generally had a lot of fun. After a few minutes Les came back and tuned his guitar and then they finished the night with WICKED WITCH, another brightly spooky song from Shadows and Dust. Wicked Witch is a wonderfully mixed-up song, and even has an "Island" sound at times with calls of "day-oh!" at various times. Les helped out Lene on this one with some background vocals, and I guess I'd describe it as a mix of Angels, Day-O, Maria, and the crazy song "They're Coming to Take Me Away" by Napoleon XIV (in the album itself there are some sounds of sirens). A wild song with a propulsive forward beat, the crowd loved it...and then the show was really over. So what was missing? The lack of a band wasn't really an issue since Les did a great job. The small but packed crowd was fine too. It would have been great for Lene to have a larger stage. She's got so much energy when she performs it was hard to see her restricted to such a small space; she kept trying to move around but ran out of room. She didn't have her trademark saxophone which was surprising, but not a problem. A mix of some well-known and rarely performed older songs with great new songs from Shadows and Dust, Lene Lovich put on a terrific show at Joe's Pub. Here's hoping the album is a success and Lene embarks on a real tour. Buy the CD for yourself and buy 5 or 10 copies for your friends!