Female Performing Artists - Live! - Free!

Yesterday evening was filled with live entertainment. After work I met Laura, Laurie, her roommate and friends over at Copley Square to take in Brandi Carlile with the Dennis Brennan Band at the kickoff for the Summer Concert series sponsored by 92.9 WBOS. We just heard the very close of the opening act, so I have no opinion on Brennan - he's fantastic I'm sure. I had never even heard of Brandi Carlile, and committed myself to what felt unnervingly like a Lilith Fair-esque chick music extravaganza. But the ladies love her, and it was a stepping stone to a later planned event, and as I am very open when it comes to music, I was willing to give Brandi a shot. Free, live music on a perfect July evening? Sign me up. (The likelihood of an extremely favorable ratio also did not fail to be included in my calculus.)

She rocked. She really did. One of the girls described her before the show as "our generation's Janis Joplin." I took this with a grain of salt, the hyperbole of music fans being something with which I am all too familiar. However, she really did remind me of Janis up there with her throaty, breaking, almost-screeching-but-not-offensively-so, emotionally raw, powerful voice. The girl's got some serious pipes. She had a great stage presence. Very cute, girl-next-door, looking vaguely Lindsay Lohan-ish. She also sported a BoSox cap for the encore, and claimed that the Sox were her one sports obsession. I have an inkling she may be a recent band wagon-rider, but I won't hold it against her. Her repertoire definitely has its share of estrogen-tinged angst, but it's good music, and the live performance was great. A couple high points of her set were her covers of "Fortunate Son" and "Folsom Prison." I only actually recognized one of her songs, "What Can I Say," which, I have since discovered, featured on Grey's Anatomy, and - much to my chagrin - I probably first heard it back when I was watching that cheesy nighttime soap on a weekly basis (TV program selection is one of the very few problems of living with females, I've found).

Brandi was solid on the whole for someone almost entirely unfamiliar with her music. I'd say the quality of the music was high, with a couple more mellow tunes mixed in with some upbeat, high-energy songs. Really quite the pleasant surprise.

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After the show we made our way over to the Blues Barge at the Boston Harbor Hotel and met up with Scott Lee Hooker to take in the last set of Toni Lynn Washington. Again, an artist with whom I was entirely unfamiliar, but Toni played a nice, smooth set of slightly mellow blues infused with a bit of rock, funk and jazz. Toni fit to a T the archetypal image I had in my head of a "blues queen" - a fairly healthy-sized older black woman in a red dress, moving perhaps a bit slower than she used to, fanning herself onstage with a black fold-out, inquiring of the crowd on numerous occasions as to their desire to rock out, and her unflagging insistence that she was going to rock us, our lack of enthusiasm and desultory clapping notwithstanding. The front of the barge was once again packed with people dancing to Toni's smoky, sultry tones in a variety of shockingly off-beat, limbs akimbo flailing for the most part (I know, perhaps I shouldn't criticize since I was sitting on my duff, but some of these folks were pretty bad. They seemed to be enjoying themselves though.) Toni gave a shout-out to one little kid on the barge with his dad. The kid was maybe 5 or 6 years old, and put on a display of the most salacious hip gyration and pelvic thrusting I've seen outside of a fraternity dance party. Hilarious and slightly unsettling.

All in all a great evening.