SOUNDTRACK: ANI DIFRANCO-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #208 (May 10, 2021).
I was a huge fan of Ani DiFranco when she came out. I loved her indie style and her cool percussive acoustic guitar playing. I stopped listening to her when she turned more jazzy/soulful. Given her vast output, I’ve probably missed about fifteen albums. Actually, when I looked her up, I see that she has slowed down on her studio output (so it’s only about 9 albums that i haven’t heard).
I thought that perhaps I would enjoy her newer stuff is it was played acoustically lie this. And I realized I really liked this first song, which I assumed was new. But, in fact it’s from an album I have.
Ani opened her set with “Everest” from the 1999 album, Up Up Up Up Up Up, a song that for me is about viewing life through different lenses and finding beauty.
I probably haven’t listened to this album in a decade, but this reminded me of why I liked her so much back then. The melody and her guitar picking style is so expressive and her lyrics, as always are thoughtful. I love the sound she gets from her guitar too, so rich, with a great low end.
I was actually a little surprised that she played these older songs, because her new album is getting some airplay (around here at least). But “Not a Pretty Girl” is such an iconic feminist song that it’s always great to hear.
Next, she sings the title track to her 1995 album, Not a Pretty Girl, which shakes the shackles of stereotypes.
She switches to a hollow-bodied electric guitar for this song (with some interesting tuning, I’m guessing). Again, terrific sound. What’s interesting is that when she first sang this song, she sang with bite in her voice. Now, all these years later, the song still resonates, but her delivery is now from a different perspective–she’s seen it all, for far too long and she knows that we all know it.
Ani DiFranco has always done things her way, and for this Tiny Desk (home) concert, she’s a one-woman team, filming and recording herself in the front hall of her New Orleans home and studio, Big Blue. The not-so-tiny desk you see in the hallway was her great grandfather’s. Other personal items seen as we scan her home include a purple painting of a tree by her cousin Jim Mott and a portrait of a woman and ghostly girl by a painter named Renata. At the time of this recording, Ani was planning to move after more than 10 years at Big Blue, so this concert is likely one of the last performances to take place in that space.
She does play a new song, though.
Her final song for this (home) concert is from her 22nd album and her latest release, Revolutionary Love. The song brings compassion to troubled times by dismissing hatred — or in her words, “To forgive but not forget.” It’s a message that shows the beauty and power of this artist, and her heart.
“Revolutionary Love” brings in guitar number 3, an acoustic guitar with a different sound than the first one. The song has a great melody and sounds very different from the recorded version. I much prefer this acoustic version than the produced version that has horns and keys. I really love the way she plays–using her thumb and fingers in a very distinctive playing style. Her voice sounds fantastic throughout–with clarity and power
[READ: June 1, 2021] “Commando”
The June 11 issue of the new Yorker had several essays under the heading “Summer Movies.” Each one is a short piece in which the author (many of whom I probably didn’t know in 2007 but do know now) reflects on, well, summer movies.
Interestingly, this essay is not actually about the movie Commando, but about movies like it. It’s about when he and his friends would imitate the movies and play “commando” in the woods–they were no doubt validated when Commando was released.
They had the perfect location.
Because, yes the woods behind our house do look like a Central American jungle. And of course it was the perfect place to reenact scenes from First Blood or Raiders of the Lost Ark–of hunting and being hunted.
Within hours of leaving the theatre, we would put on our fatigues (we called them camos) throw our weapons and accessories in our backpacks, get on our bikes, and ride down to the ravines by the beach.
[I can recall doing just what he says (although not in such a dangerous way)–replicating what we saw in the movies].
Ralph Macchio’s victory kick at the end of the The Karate Kid. After seeing Breaking Away did we, while riding at top speed, stick bicycle pumps into each others spokes to see if this would indeed cause a horrific wipeout? Yes, and it did.
After seeing Enter the Ninja they made their own throwing stars. And what inspiration was provided by the equipment and settings of The Road Warrior.
They had weapons–swiss army knifes, wrist rockets and as many bandanas a a possible–Dave always liked to have some kind of knife taped to my calf.
And then just like in all made up kid games
there would be the inevitable awkward pause when we realized once again that there was no clear objective to whatever we were about to do. There were never teams or rules or objectives… eventually … we would descend into the ravine, tackling and being tackled all the while trying not to get stabbed by the throwing stars in our pockets and the knife strapped to our legs.
As I was reading this I thought jeez, that sounds really dangerous. And he agrees
The ravines were sixty feet deep. The stream was cold and rocky and injuries did occur.
But the point was that this wasn’t escapist entertainment.
setting traps and running with a knife between your teeth diving into a pit and emerging from a river, camouflaged in mud–all of it seemed more natural, more in such with the adrenaline that was coursing through our adolescent bodies, than anything else in our pedestrian existence.
It’s nice to know that even commandos can group up to be decent thoughtful adults.
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