painting by Zachary Pullen

One Righteous Babe

1999 Ani Difranco show review by Renate Pullen

I finally realized my dream of never shaving any part of my body again . . . or maybe I should say I lived this dream through the majority of the girls at the Ani DiFranco concert on July 5th at Red Rocks in Morrison, Colorado.

Zak and I arrived early in order to get the best seat (it was really because I am such an Ani fanatic!) only to discover that hundreds of other shaved-head, hairy-legged girls had the same idea. That was okay, though, because people-watching is one of my favorite pastimes. In fact, I felt really out of place wearing a bra at this show!

I should add that the most exciting part before the show began was watching Zak meet Julie Wolf, Ani's keyboardist. Of course, I didn't recognize her, so I didn't get the joy of meeting her personally, but I sure stared at her a lot as she sat in front of us with some friends who had come to the show.

Those lucky friends had backstage passes sticking to their shirts, so I was extremely jealous. What if I could just reach over and peel off those Righteous Babe passes and meet the folksinger herself? Enough babbling . . . Maceo Parker was next on the scene as Ani's opening act. He was a great performer. He really worked the crowd and managed to get every body in the amphitheater off their seats and dancing. Maceo scored even bigger points by bringing out Ani herself to sing a song with him. She stood there, all her 5'2" with her 6" boots, and rocked out. She is just so cute! I had to pull out my tiny binoculars and stare at her awesome tattoo and make sure it was really her I was watching. Her brief appearance gave everyone a taste of what was to come. Maceo finished his groovin' set to the chant of "Move Your Body, Move Your Body!" I was really anxious now. Zak had left me to go take some great pictures and I had no one with whom to share my excitement. I guess I could have shared it with the crazy guy on my right with the long fingernails filed into perfect points and who smoked like a chimney. Or I could have gotten close to the other crazy guy to my left who just stood there like a statue not moving the entire concert. Well...it was quite the decision, but I decided to wait for Zak and celebrate the Ani experience by myself, for the first three songs at least.

Ani's reappearance began with "Virtue," the second song on her latest solo release Up, Up, Up, Up, Up, Up. She simply rocks on guitar, and not having a musical bone in my body, this is the best description you are going to get.

Her second song, "Little Plastic Castle" from the CD titled the same, really got the crowd going. She furiously strummed away with her fake press-on fingernails duct-taped to her right hand to do her intricate pickings.

Ani's best characteristic (one of many) is that she is able to laugh at herself. She was in the middle of belting out "Fuel," another song from the Little Plastic Castle CD, and she began singing the wrong verse. She realized this when everyone in the audience was singing the correct words.

She managed to get this infectious laugh going, but she was able to regain her composure and finish the song beautifully. You almost have to like her for messing up a song because she can get away with it without complete embarrassment. She just likes to have a good time, which makes everyone in the crowd have a great time. After some of her catchy songs and lyrics, the folksinger decides to spellbind us even more with a rendition of her song "You Had Time" from her 1994 album Out Of Range. The song is simply beautiful, quiet, and leaves everyone's lower jaw on the ground in amazement. She can go from funky, loud, and pounding to mellow, soft, and quiet in an instant. She continued in this spirit while singing "Pulse" from Little Plastic Castle.

As I said previously, she can switch in an instant. And so she did. She blew me out of the water with a new song, "Providence" which, of course, makes me look forward anxiously to her new album. She described it as one of those "angst-ridden songs, but not from personal experience of course." She begins very soft and mellow but the chorus is bursting with anger and rage as she asks: "I'm gonna have to fill out a full report / and the first question will be / What were you thinking? / And the next question will be / What did you say? / Then you're gonna check to see / if the answers to one and two / match up much, along the way / true love, but for the lack of providence." A superb addition to the Ani song archive.

Ani wowed us even more with a few more songs from her new release Up, Up, Up, Up, Up, Up known as "Come Away From It," about the tragic things drugs can do to a person and a relationship, "Jukebox," and "Angry Anymore" when Julie Wolf (remember her . . . she is Ani's keyboardist that Zak was privileged to meet) played her accordion and sang beautiful harmonies with Ani. Ani even played two of my personal favorites "Two Little Girls" from Little Plastic Castle, yet another song about the stupidity of drug use, and "Shy" from the 1995 album Not a Pretty Girl, a song that just rocks. To my surprise, Ani performed "The Diner" from the Out Of Range album and "Letter to a John" from the same. "Anticipate" was another favorite from way back in 1991 on the Not So Soft CD. She even did a funky remix of an older song called "Willing to Fight" from her 1993 release titled Puddle Dive. It was so funky that it took me a long time to figure out which song it was!

Now I am obligated to spend some time on the best song of the entire night because the article would not be nearly complete without it. It is a new song that so many people responded to it cannot be ignored. "The Teeth" was written as a reaction to the shootings in Littleton, Colorado, and as a reaction to our failing society and our ability to "sleep through a century." As always, Ani has such a way with words that it almost brought tears to my eyes. If I could, I would write the entire song lyrics in this article, but I will save time and let you go and listen to it when her new CD is released. She refers to our gun-toting society as a "cultural death wish." She even offers her "humble opinion" to "open fire on Hollywood / open fire on MTV / open fire on NBC and CBS and ABC / open fire on the NRA / and all the lies they told us along the way / open fire on each weapons manufacturer / while he's giving head to some republican senator." She ends this powerful song with: "And if I have to hear one more time / about a fool's right to his tools of rage / I'm going to move to Canada / and we're going to die of old age."

Yet another part of the show that amazed me was the spoken-word renditions she performed. She included "My I.Q." from the 1993 release Puddle Dive, and she even grabbed her drummer and they both played the bongos to "Not So Soft" from the album titled the same released in 1991. "My I.Q." is inspiring as the folksinger speaks out: "I sing sometimes like my life is at stake 'cause you're only as loud as the noises you make. I'm learning to laugh as loud as I can listen 'cause silence is violence in women and poor people if more people were screaming then I could relax." "Not So Soft" was astounding with the bongo beat as Ani uttered: "In a forest of stone underneath the corporate canopy where the sun rarely filters down the ground is not so soft, not so soft . . .I am foraging for a phone booth on the forest floor that is not so soft I look up it looks like the buildings are burning but it's just the sun setting in the windows the solar system calling an end to another business day eternally circling signaling the rhythmic clicking on and off of computers the pulse of the American machine . . ."

I could have listened to her sing and play her amazing guitar all night, but of course, the night and the fun have to come to an end sometime. After much applause and screaming (my hands were numb and my throat was hoarse), Ani and her band played one song as an encore. The song was a cover called "When You Were Mine," but for the life of me I cannot remember who sang it first.

But I can say that Ani sang it exceedingly well, and she even brought out Maceo Parker to play the saxophone to close the show. She left everyone wanting more. I left Red Rocks with the enormous crowd listening to all the ecstatic fans and the glowing comments to the car stereos blasting Ani's CD's on the way out. It was an amazing show, one that I will never forget. I can only hope that you will have the privilege of seeing a live Ani DiFranco concert sometime in your life so that you can experience the Righteous Babe for yourself. If not, you could definitely get a taste of her outrageous style on all of her fourteen CD's released since 1990.