I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED:November 13, 2017] Regina Spektor

I have really enjoyed a lot of Regina Spektor’s music.  I have never seen her play, so this show at the nearby State Theatre seemed like a great opportunity.  I don’t know what she normally tours like, but this show was advertised as just her, playing solo.  And that was fine with me.

She came out on stage to thunderous applause and whispered “thanks” into the microphone.  She then proceeded to sings songs and drink water (a lot of) water.  Turns out that she had bronchitis.  And amazingly, she sounded freaking terrific.  Her voice was outstanding (and her piano playing was pretty fab as well).

The show was listed as being an hour and forty-five minutes and in that time she told stories, played different instruments and sang twenty-five songs.

It turns out that I really love the middle stuff (her fifth and sixth albums).  I don’t know her really early stuff and I somehow missed the new album.  So when I heard that this tour was going to be a lot of old stuff and rarities, I figured that I wasn’t going to know much, but I’d still enjoy it.  Sarah said she actually didn’t know any of the songs (but she loved her voice).  I knew about six songs.

I also had no idea that Regina had such a cultish following (reminding me of the audiences for a number of other earnest, honest female performers).  The woman next to me laughed hysterically at everything Regina said (many things were quite funny but not all of them).

The lighting was pretty interesting. The stage was pretty dark with spotlights arranged around the stage.  It was fairly stark  but occasionally the lighting came up from underneath and highlighted the beautiful ceiling in the State Theater.

She came out and sat at the piano and opened with “Folding Chair,” a song I love from Far.  She sounded perfect.  And then she proceeded to play songs from the albums before and the one after the albums I know really well.

The songs were terrific and the rest of the audience was thrilled.  Since I didn’t know them (and since the crowd was really respectfully silent), I was able to really appreciate her lyrics and her sense of melody.  It’s rare that I can enjoy a whole bunch of songs that I don’t know as much as I enjoyed these.

She said she was going to play some old shit and she played “Prisoners” from her second album.  She apologized if she messed up but don’t think she did.

After a couple of songs people shouted out requests.  It delighted me that she politely said, “I have a list, I may go off the list, but I do have a list.  After the next song when someone shouted a request again, she firmly but sweetly stated “I have a list.”  There were no more requests after that.

The song which I didn’t know but which impressed me a lot was “Left Hand Song.”  She told us that she had banged up her right hand doing something or other and she couldn’t use it.  So she wrote a song for her left hand.  And it was complex and multifaceted.  It wasn’t just bass lines, she used her left hand on the melody keys as well (there was a song later where she used her right hand to play deep bass notes while her left hand played the bass melody).

She has a number of songs that are sort of cute and short, lyrically minimal but enjoyable nonetheless.  Like “Loveology” and later “Reginasaurus.”  She also sings about pretty unusual things, like meatballs and dolphins.  But she also has sophisticated lyrics as well.

I enjoyed the lyrical smartypantysness of “Pound of Flesh” which name checks Ezra Pound and Shakespeare.  After playing “Better” from Begin to Hope, she moved over to an organ on the side of the stage which I hadn’t noticed.

She instantly regretted her clothing choice (don;t look up my skirt you guys) but then complemented her hair (which she didn’t “do” after her nap–she woke up like that!).  She told us a lengthy story about how she liked to bang on things with a drum stick.  How when she was playing in clubs she became a connoisseur of banging on things like milk crates and bars and chairs.  And she told a rather lengthy but rather amusing story about a fantasy of a man coming into a bar and buying her the perfect chair and then vanishing (I didn’t need him, I needed the chair).  She then proceeded to play (hitting the drumstick all over the chair) “Poor Little Rich Boy” from Soviet Kitsch an album I know but not that well.

Then she played two songs from What We Saw from the Cheap Seats, one of the albums I love, so this keyboard section was awesome for me.  They were absolutely terrific.  She said that “Ballad of a Politician” was far too appropriate now.  She said that for a year she has just had a level of anger in her that she has never had before–it was a low level hum like a fridge plugged in.  And I have to say that is the best metaphor for trump I have ever heard.  She was much more lighthearted for “Don’t Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas)” and kept it local when she sang “I love Paris in the rain, I love New Brunswick in the rain.”

She paused for a moment after “Don’t Leave Me” and then got up and walked over to the lovely light blue electric guitar she had on the left side of the stage.  I didn’t even know she played guitar.  She played two songs, with minimal guitar work in them, but with a nice punk feel, especially “That Time” with its cool aggressive riff.

She talked a bot about her bronchitis and the drugs she was on.  She said steroids are a pretty good thing and that she actually broke a piano string recently.  She said her friend Ben Folds breaks piano strings all the time, but she doesn’t.  I can;t even comprehend how you break a piano string.

Then she moved back to the piano for four more songs from her fourth and seventh albums.  And again, her voice was really amazing.  She can hit some incredible notes, she has a terrific range and also does some amusing voices and vocal tricks during the songs.

This isn’t really a good venue for pictures of video, but I had to take this little clip just to record how great her voice sounded.

Then she went back over to the guitar area but sang a capella.  The first song was the childlike “Reginasaurus” which was cute.  But the second was very different, a starkly beautiful rendition of the standard “My Man” (it was done by Billie Holiday among others).  She had recorded it for Boardwalk Empire.  I didn’t know the song but I was sure it was an old song as it is about what we now consider an abusive relationship but which may have been considered love back in the day.

She followed that up with another a capella song.  Although this time, she stood at the back of the piano and played a thumping rhythm (with fist and palm) on it as she sang “Flyin.'”  She mentioned all of the sexual harassment that has been coming to light and said that she had written about this back in 2001 when she was in college:

Went to school with them boring teachers
Who thought they was all my preachers
So I went starin’ out of my window
…

One of them took me with him to sleep
Said not to make a peep
Said it’ll be a secret we keep
So I didn’t make a peep
Kissed my cheek and rubbed my feet
But his kissin’ didn’t taste so sweet
Told him I just wanted to sleep
So he got mad
And he got madder, and he got maddest of them all

Wow.

She went back to the piano and played a few more songs. “Eet” another song from Far, the other album of hers that I love.  As the show was drawing to a close she seemed to pull out some more older songs that got the fans really excited.

When she played “On the Radio” I heard someone behind me loudly whisper “yes!” and when she played “Us” there was much cheering and murmuring of approval.

Then she left.

After a few minutes she came back with her husband Jack Dishel (the person next to me said “That’s her husband”).  He played guitar and they did a wonderful cover of my favorite “recent” Tom Petty song, “Yer So Bad.”    Then they played “Hotel Song” with Dishel dong a phenomenal beatbox.  He kept a great beat, made some amazing sounds and even threw in some melodies while beatboxing–no idea how he did that as no looping was involved.

Then he left and she played “Samson” another old song that the fans were thrilled with.

She thanked us and the lights came up.

On the way out I heard some people complaining about their seat neighbors: “This guy recorded the whole show on his phone.  He came to this amazing concert and watched the whole thing n his phone.”  And another complaint about the guy who whistled loudly a lot (I didn’t care for him, either).

But we left with a great feeling of warmth and peace from such amazing music.

1. Folding Chair
2. The One Who Stayed and the One Who Left
3. Grand Hotel
4. Prisoners
5. Left Hand Song
6. Pound of Flesh
7. Loveology
8. Better
9. Poor Little Rich Boy
10. Ballad of a Politician
11. Don’t Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas)
12. Bobbing for Apples (on guitar)
13. That Time (on guitar)
14. Black and White
15. Après Moi
16. Music Box
17. Obsolete
18. Reginasaurus (a cappella)
19. My Man (a cappella)
20. Flyin’
21. Eet
22. On the Radio
23. Us
24. Encore:
25. Yer So Bad (Tom Petty cover) (with Jack Dishel)
26. Hotel Song (with Jack Dishel)
27. Samson