Street Angel Tour Stories

[wheart]

Originally Posted by petep9000

SA is a tour that I wish I could remember more about. Because I did go to see her when she made her usual stop at The Jones Beach Theatre here in NY. Yet somehow, I can't remember much about the show in terms of the little things I usually notice: clothing, accessories, band quality, voice quality, the weather, boots or 'boks, etc. I remember the songs on the set list but not their order. I remember some stranger sitting behind me asking if his girlfriend could borrow my binoculars during 'Destiny' because he said it was her favorite song. I can't remember her vocals though, which is a shame because when I hear SA live performances now I think they sound great compared to some of the snoozers she did on TITN, Timespace and OSOTM tours. I think I remember the show opening with 'Blue Denim' though I might be wrong.
It's possible I had a bad day or something that day, and it carried over to the evening and that's why it didn't click into my mind as much as some other shows did.

I have this show on VHS and it's an amazing performance from start to finish. It was the second show of the tour but you wouldn't know it. It was flawless, I wish I had been there. She did open with Blue Denim and then changed (which was awkard after the first song) and did went into Dreams. I don't think she opened with Blue Denim for any show after that but I could be wrong. She mentioned how hot it was and how she had to leave the stage to dry her hair. She seemed very relaxed and in a great mood, which is interesting because she seemed downright terrified in Boston for the tour's opener.

[wheart]

I remember buying my ticket for this show better than I remember the actual show. I was driving to work on a Saturday and heard on the radio that tickets went on sale at 10 am. I started freaking out. I don't know why I wasn't aware of this beforehand but this was pre internet (at least in my house).So on my lunch I raced over to a ticket place and got 15th row. The lady said I should have been there this morning, she had 2nd row. This, of course, completely bummed me out but I was still happy with 15th row.

The show was good but nothing too memorable. I didn't have a very good view of the stage even though I was fairly close. Stevie was not real energetic or animated but her voice sounded good. She was looking kinda large. She did wear a lot of white, as I recall. A fight broke out towards the end of the show in the row in front of me and the people fighting came careening over chairs right in my direction. I had the sense to move or I would have ended up on the ground. A little scary...

[ragrsrocalot]

I went to two shows this tour. The first one was at Jones Beach. Really liked this show. Rick Vito was playing with her. I remember she was dancing alot, her voice sounded good, but she forgot some the the lyrics to a few songs, Rhiannon, I remember sounded amazing in the begining, real real pretty, different, but towards the end she forgot to sing a whole verse, she said something to the effect after the song was over, that she wrote it one way, and performs it another way, so she said she decided to do both. Ha Ha, good save Stevie. That is what stands out from that show. The second show was at the Garden State Arts Center. This was also the second time that I got to shake Stevie's hand at a concert. After I shook her hand and kissed it, she reached over to the next person, and her white cape was out stretched, so I ran my fingers up and down the white fringes on her cape, and also touched her beautiful suede boots. Wow what a thrill, more than I could have ever dreamed of. I also remember being crushed up against the stage as the crowd behind me tried to get closer to the stage, I was thinking that I was in a bad situation, I was really just tring to breathe and stay calm, security had to intervene and move people back. I will always remember my Street Angel experiences. Thank you Stevie!

[MoonWaterPoet]

Originally Posted by Haunted_Song

I saw the Houston and Dallas Street Angel shows at the end of the tour, and she did perform "The Chain".

I was at the Dallas show also... September 10th, 1994... Please tell me you have some audio bootlegs from this show... It's really Important to me... And yes, she changed the set list around, I guess with it being close to the end of this tour... "I Need To Know" was about the 4th or 5th song that she did... because it was still daylight when she sang it... in the old "Coca-Cola Star-Plex" Dallas...
I really need some audio boots for this show...
Thanks ~

Donnie Wayne ~

[David]

Originally Posted by ragrsrocalot

The second show was at the Garden State Arts Center.

Was that the show in Holmdel? Her rendition of Destiny from Holmdel is one of the three best on the whole tour, to my ears.

[ragrsrocalot]

Originally Posted by David

Was that the show in Holmdel? Her rendition of Destiny from Holmdel is one of the three best on the whole tour, to my ears.

Yes it is Holmdel. Now the venue is called PNC Arts Center.

[Musicman408]

Who all sang backup to Stevie other than the incomparable Sara Fleetwood. Was it Lori and Sharon?

[nailatixela]

Originally Posted by Musicman408

Who all sang backup to Stevie other than the incomparable Sara Fleetwood. Was it Lori and Sharon?

Going off memory from the Blue Den video... I don't believe Lori was there. Sharon was, along with Liza Jane.

[Musicman408]

Originally Posted by nailatixela

Going off memory from the Blue Den video... I don't believe Lori was there. Sharon was, along with Liza Jane.

That's right, I forgot about her. So the two of them were with Sara- I gotcha now! Thank you!

[Nikolaj]

I saw this tour in Mansfield, Mass., it was my first SN concert since I'd left LA for good, and now it's been 15+ years for me back 'home' in CT. So, the 'Street Angel' tour is a milestone in post LA Stevie concert-going for me.
It felt great, in the summer of 1994, to be seeing her after what seemed like- and was- quite a long dry spell, of no Stevie on tour at all. Highlights were a really spectacular 'How Still My Love'- the stage went totally black for 'this is me talkin to ya'-- eery, and effective. That night also was the last 'Rhiannon' performance, to date, that still had some exquisite magic in it, for me.
No solo version of 'The Chain'-- I would have loved that! How lucky anyone is who has ever heard perform that on a solo tour, it's a real rarity, almost of 'At Last' proportions
She was real heavy, definitely. None of the audience seemed to mind, really. The 'Edge' walk went on forever! The 'Rhiannon' ending was fierce..."and wouldn't you love, wouldn't you luh-huve, wouldn't you luhh-huh-huh-ve to-ooo luhhh- vvvve her"-- right into my eyes, I swear
The rest of the show, for me, was unremarkable.
No tourbooks at the venue!
I really was loving the 'Mirror Mirror' b-side to the Blue Denim single right around this time, love her vocals on it. 'Inspiration' was also a killer track, I would have loved to have heard either in concert- sorry, I always have really gagged at 'Destiny' -- still do-- and would have prefered 'Inspiration' and 'Mirror Mirror' to have made the cd and not 'Jane' or 'Destiny'.
Some good moments at the concert, though I did have a sad feeling at the end, like 'an era has really ended', and in a way, it had ended.
Thankfully, just 3 years later we had 'The Dance' reunion and an entire renaissance of Stevie-appreciation, culminating in the '98 Enchanted box set and her totally exceptional 'Enchanted' tour in '98, which she played in Hartford, the night she turned 50. She was at her best. The '94 Street Angel tour was, in a way, depressing, to see her in decline, which was my impression at the time, 'she's in decline'.
3 and 4 years later, seeing Stevie in peak form again, was just incredible.

[TheWILDheart]

IIRC, wasn't "No Spoken Word" on the early setlists?

[ragrsrocalot]

Originally Posted by Musicman408

Who all sang backup to Stevie other than the incomparable Sara Fleetwood. Was it Lori and Sharon?

This was a FUNNY band introduction from the SA tour. Backup singers were, Sharon, Liza, and Sara.

[nailatixela]

Thanks so much for posting that great band introduction video. Wow, I was shocked to hear Stevie admit Sharon's true place of birth! She seems so happy and silly here...it was different then I expected. Thanks again.

[ragrsrocalot]

Ha Ha. Yes definitely in good spirits on that tour. I was surprised that she introduced Russ Kunkel as her musical director, I thought that role went to Carlos, in Waddy's absence.

[michelej1]

There's a detailed blog review of Street Angel on "Dan's Blog."

http://dancsblog.blogspot.com/2010/0...eet-angel.html

Here's an excerpt:

Much like I did with The Other Side of the Mirror, I tried to talk myself into liking it. It's not hard to do when it's a long-awaited release by a what amounts to a core artist in your listening habits, but there was something niggling at the back of my brain. "This isn't that good..." it seemed to say. "Stevie really doesn't sound like she's even there." And as it turns out, it was true. When the album was in production, Stevie was back in rehab, AGAIN, this time trying to kick the Klonopin habit that had started with her finally and completely kicking of the cocaine habit in the late 80s. Stevie's songs and voice are pretty much the only thing authentically Stevie on the album. The production, the album art, everything else has the feel of something cobbled together by committee. I swear that given the opportunity, even with the limited technology of the day, I could have come up with a better album cover than what the record company did! What's contained in the album is nearly as amateur. There's an ill-advised cover of Bob Dylan's "Just Like A Woman" and an obtuse song about Jane Goodall. The production is very generic and blah - living up to neither the acoustic greatness of Bella Donna or the synthy-goodness of Rock A Little. As an album, it fails, completely and utterly.

But all is not lost. I've been listening to this album while I write this post and there are several good songs. Not surprisingly, many of them are songs written by Stevie for the first three albums and ultimately rejected for whatever reason. The first time I listened to the song "Greta" I had what basically was a deja vu moment - it sounded just like classic Stevie, complete with the spoken "Oooh, she's got a movie star view..." moment. Well, "Greta" was originally recorded for The Wild Heart - no wonder it sounds like 80s Stevie! The "Greta" demo from that time period is circulating on the internet and is astounding for both its similarities and differences to the version that eventually ended up on Street Angel. Lyrically, it's pretty much identical, but the 80s version is faster and has an 80s groove that is notably absent on the Street Angel version.

Another standout is one of my favorite Stevie tracks, "Blue Denim." (embedding disabled? Seriously!?) A classic Stevie rocker co-written with Heartbreaker Mike Campbell, it kicks the album off in fine form and was even released as the second single. Even though Stevie does sound a bit bored through parts of it, singing the "blue grey eyes they change with the color" chorus in practically a monotone, there's a urgency in the song that even Stevie's Klonopin use couldn't douse. By the time we hit the last minute of the song and she wails "Yes I'm going away for a little while to remember how to feel!/And if I find the answer, I promise you/I'll come back and get you," you can just see Stevie on a concert stage, her chiffon dress billowing out as she twirls as only Stevie can. She hit the talk show circuit to promote "Blue Denim", appearing on David Letterman with a crimped hairdo and very overweight - so much so that upon viewing it, she vowed to retire unless she could lose weight.

* * *
But back to the music. Even lesser songs like "Maybe Love Will Change Your Mind" and the title track have aged better than they should have. But most of the rest of it is a forgettable train wreck. It's a train wreck like only Stevie can do it and because it's Stevie, it's still moderately listenable for me. As I said earlier, I have been listening to it while I write this post and at several points, I've had to stop and ask myself if I'm being too hard on it. Well, as a friend of mine said to me once, "Don't kid yourself, Dan. That album is ASS!" And yeah, for the most part it is. It is on par with The Other Side of the Mirror and doesn't hold up even remotely when compared to Bella Donna, The Wild Heart and Rock A Little. Clearly, when given a choice between the two, the cocaine was a better muse for Stevie than the Klonopin, although I'd prefer she had neither.