a mother of a show

[reverancepavane]

A very relaxed Clare Bowditch show at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. I'm fairly certain she didn't forget more than half the words from more than half the songs, but it might have been close. Seriously she covered well and you would have to be a musical super-genius fan of Clare average audience member primary school graduate to notice her clever improvised substitutions. I mean the escalating trill of "for-gott-tetten-eenn-en" was a bit of a fit in that one song, but otherwise... On a far more serious note (such as the one Clare illustrated on the piano-forte in imitation of Gerard Depardieu in Green card) it was a lot of fun. There was a lot of new stuff (world premiere - 1 [as there was a show yesterday]), a couple of covers, and some from the last album. A lot of crowd participation was required, which met with mixed success amongst the generally older audience near the stage (critical mass was never really reached and sustained until just near the end). I'm sure there are a lot of illegal bootlegs of her new songs available somewhere, especially when Clare pointedly hinted that she didn't really mind bootlegs (although such was seriously against Festival policy, so no one was obvious about it). The crowd was heavily biased towards the Adelaide Cabaret Festival attendees rather than Clare's usual run of much younger fans (at least gathering from the people seated around us, although I expect there was an age-reversal in the gallery. We were in fact joined at our table by a nice couple of afore-mentioned Festival-goers who were astonished to discover that we had seen Clare seven or so times previously (five for me I think). They were quite impressed and were looking forward to attending one of her future shows at The Gov with her full line-up (this had a much abbreviated line-up). Was quite enjoyable, rounded out by dessert at Saldechin (a white chocolate and cheese empanada for me). Looked like so many wonderful singers and shows at the Cabaret Festival this year. Almost tempted by a few, but I shall resist. Probably even resist Tripod since no one else is interested. <sigh>

Comments

[derigueur.livejournal.com]

Only time I've seen Clare in concert was as an opener for Leonard Cohen. She came before the other opening act, Paul Kelly and the Bull Sisters, so she suffered mightily in hindsight, but I can't say I was impressed with her to begin with.