My first Ani concert, what a night. The crowd of probably 5,000 poured
into the medievel looking Greek Theater in Berkeley, California on July
9th. The sun was beaming down, and everyone was getting a little
restless, listening to the techno, trip-hop.. whatever you call it. Then
the opening act, Maceo Parker, walked on the stage. He played his funk
for a while, some of the audience danced. Then Ani stepped on for a
song, and everyone was screaming "Move your body" and really getting
into it. Maceo played for a little longer, and then around 9 or 9:15,
Ani stepped on and started to play Virtue, a song that I had never heard
before.
I was so entranced, after hearing her albums and loving them, I was
finally hearing what everyone was talking about. She truly WAS a
performer, getting a lot of her energy from the audience. She played a
few new songs, that were mentioned in some of the earlier reviews. "To
the Teeth" was a beautiful and powerful cry for new beliefs. "Hello
Birmingham" was a song about murders that are senseless and too close to
home. She played songs new and old, jabbering inbetween about the cold
and thanking her band. She brought out a lot of the people from the
opening acts to create even more melody for her songs. I'm not going to
try to create a setlist, because I can't remember all of the songs, but
ones I do remember are: Virtue, Shameless, Shy, To the Teeth, Hello
Birmingham, Cloud Blood, Angry Anymore, Jukebox, Overlap, Not So Soft,
Two Little Girls... and some others.
I left the Greek Theater thinking,"Yeah this is the best concert I have
ever seen." I look forward to another Ani show.
Emerald