Champoeg State Park Amphitheater, St Paul, OR6th July 1998 |
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The venue of this concert was the Champoeg State Park amphitheater about
25 miles south of Portland. Really a scenic and serene spot for a
concert (minus the difficulties getting into the parking place). Ani
was in a gregarious mood all night. She could be spotted offstage
during the warm-up band jumpin, dancin, and yelling encouragements
onstage.
Ani was sporting a cute yellow skirt and sorta red and blue colored
dreads (or at least braids that looked like dreads from 200 feet). Andy
was sporting a "Springsteen headband", which he apologized for, saying
he just couldn't deal with his hair that night. The bass player had a
goofy straw cowboy hat on which made him look like "The Edge" (or was it
Bono?) of U2, and the keyboard player looked great in her black dress
and black knit hat (first time I'd seen her. Great voice, good
harmonies, funky keyboards)
Half the concert-goers were drenched with water as it was hot out and
the venue had a mister/shower area set up where you could cool down.
Recollecting the night, the songs that stood out for me were "As Is",
"Fuel", and "Anticipate" although a lot of the new material that she
went through sounded really good too (but I don't know the names of
them).
Ani professed her misunderstanding of the 1980's war on drugs, calling
it instead a war on the poor and homeless. She then busted into a
killer version of "Country 'tis of Thee" which being the first time I'd
heard it, really made an impression on me.
She closed with Prince's "When Dove's Cry" (before the encores) which
was very funky and well received.
The crowd was big, filling the amphitheater and unfortunately too noisy
for my tastes during the slower tunes. That's one thing I've noticed
about Ani concerts is that they're as much a place where people are
meeting and re-meeting as they are a concert. The two often competing.
Luckily Ani doesn't seem to mind too much.
Some other tid-bits not really worth mentioning, but what the heck
Ani told a story of going to a Bjork concert with Andy and sitting on
his shoulders the whole show because Andy wanted to get close to the
stage and Ani couldn't see cuz she was too short.
Great warm-up band, don't remember their name but they were a brass
band, New Orleans-style. Very unique and very entertaining.
Unusually blue skies in Portland. And unusually HOT.
I thought having to pay $3.00 to park is overboard. Am I the only one
who thinks that after paying $50 dollars for a couple tickets, it ought
to cover parking my car. When you add up the TicketBastard service
charges and parking charges, there sure are a lot of people making money
off of me.