Ani Difranco at the United Palace Theater

Ani Difranco played the United Palace Theater on Wednesday night, and I was there. The poet Aaron Smith came with me, and blogged about it here. Nick and his girlfriend Jamie joined, as well as my friend Peter, (not this Peter,) who started off as a maple candy customer and then became a syrup stand hanger-on, and now we hang out sometimes--he's moving to Florida in a couple of weeks to teach Women's Studies at Florida Atlantic University. Marianne, who I also know from the Greenmarket, and who hadn't seen Ms. Difranco in many, many years, was able to even got to hear her favorite, 32 Flavors. It was a veritable cavalcade of people who don't know each other, but are united in Ani-dom.

The acoustics at the United Palace are really phenomenal. I think it also helped that we were sitting in the 11th row, which is somehow in front of the sound of the thousand or so Ani fans who insist on screaming along, singing every word as loud as they can, as a sign of their devotion. Ani's band really shines when you can hear them--last summer in Prospect Park, as amazing as the show was, the small details were lost in the expanse of the outdoors, the huge crowd. However, at the United Palace, every texture was beautifully balanced, and tiny things like egg shakers become a real part of the music.

The setlist was a bit odd, and in that way we were lucky. Some of the old warhorses she skipped--which I appreciate--and some of them, like Napoleon and Evolve, I'm glad she left in. I wonder if at this point her career a song like Shameless, which she has played surely more than 1000 times, if it lives somewhere outside of her, if it has grown into something else, something that lives in the air in front of the stage. Or something like that.

Ani's fans have been listening to her for more than 15 years now, some of them, me included. The newness of the experience has worn off a bit--this is not to downplay the brilliance of her stage shows, or the respect and love that I have for her music. But I'm glad that people don't feel the need, as much anymore, to stand in middle of the rows, dancing, to the annoyance of everyone around them.

But there comes a moment. The moment comes when certain pockets of fans decide that they no longer care if they are annoying the people around them, and they just go right ahead and stand in the rows and dance. What interests me about this moment is that it always happens during Shameless, or whatever number falls at the end of the show, before the encore. Perhaps more interestingly, they only do it during songs that they know. The moment becomes about their experience at the concert, and not necessarily about the concert itself.

I'm always interested in how people write narratives for themselves, and then play them out. Whenever you see a Broadway musical these days, the show gets a standing ovation, regardless of whether or not the show is any good. They've paid $100, sometimes $120, to see this show, and goddammit, they are going to have a good time--the standing O is the way of re-affirming their experience, of crystallizing it as a meaningful one, and a way of finishing the story for their friends back home: "Oh, Helen, we saw the best show, and it got a standing ovation."

Something similar goes on at the Ani shows. I began really thinking about this when I noticed that the fans who do this don't dance in the aisles during the upbeat, danceable, rocking-out songs, if the songs are new to them. Ani is always playing new songs that don't appear on any studio record, sometimes she plays songs that never end up on a studio record. And so the actual experience becomes alien, and the planned experience is played out in moments.

What it all boils down to is people trying to have an experience. People just want a taste of that intimacy that they feel when they're sitting in their tiny bedrooms, spinning the records over and over. I understand it.

Here's the setlist from 7/16, it it means anything to any of you:

Anticipate
Present/Infant
Subdivision
Angry Anymore
Red Letter Year
Napoleon
Rain Check
Welcome To:
Sunday Morning
Animal
Garden of Simple
Imagine That
The Atom
Alla This
As Is
Shameless
---
Evolve
Everest
32 Flavors