Quote:
Originally Posted by David
You're right. She has stepped out of the usual on some of her tours. I'm not totally familiar with the 24 Karat tour, but I saw videos of the two title tracks of her first two albums. I wanted to give Stevie a warm handshake when I saw those. And her 1998 tour with Sleeping Angel and Rose Garden and Garbo, too. Muchos kudos. I saw Stevie's first tour and felt the excitement of seeing her play a Tom Petty song I had no knowledge she even knew. So she has definitely made her brave, funky choices, and they almost always turned out to be very welcome.
But she has never been a shock jock of the concert set list. She usually treats her choice and running order of songs as a commodity: this year sounds a lot like last year, which sounded a lot like the year before, etc.
And even more pronounced than the choice of song for a tour is the arrangement of the song. Depending on the band, it's almost always the same. There isn't much difference in the way Dreams is done onstage from decade to decade. Maybe the fatigue we sometimes say we feel with certain songs is really a fatigue with the musical sameness. (What if this year they did Dreams entirely a cappella, with Stevie, Christine, Neil, Mike, and backup people?) Lindsey does this too, I'm bummed to say, but on occasion he "reimagines" a song by giving it a new arrangement or a different atmosphere, as he did with Big Love and what-all I can't think of the others. I think on one tour of his, he did I'm So Afraid with a greatly-pared-down drum kit, which made it sound kind of futuristic or sci-fi.
I've always been of the mind that I don't care what they all play, if they're playing it differently.
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Definitely. I would add, as a big fan of their music, I've watched the Mirage, Tango, White Winged Dove, Dance, and Rock a Little videos so much that I burnt myself out on songs that were always featured, such as GDW, Rhiannon, and Dreams. That's not Stevie's fault, but that's why I personally could go without ever hearing those songs live again. So your idea that they could mix the arrangement up is fantastic, and I think even the casual fan would like that. Although can one really be called a casual fan of they pay $100 for a ticket
