When I toyed with Alan about coming out to see Liz Phair, he leaned into it. Next thing I know it was being planned and I had both plane tickets and show tickets! The night of the show Alan and Jeannie and I had dinner near the theater and walked down to the show.

The theater was an old classic and after getting in out of the cold we made our way up to the lounge access we got with the tickets and got a drinks. Then we made our way to a little balcony overlooking the stage which we quickly got shooed out of. We ended up in a weird stairway to the “lounge” our tickets granted access to which were a series of small areas with seating of a sort and pictures of Pearl Jam early shows on the walls. We settled in and got comfortable for approximately 1 minute when an usher came to tell us that the GA seating in the second balcony was open and we could get our seats.

The way to do this was to go back down to the floor level again and go up a series of fun house style steps going back and forth hugging the walls of the theater until we finally reached the top and after checking all in our party for signs of arrhythmia, we came out into the second balcony area.

I’ve been in some upper sections before, but this one seemed particularly steep, but ultimately that was good for viewing. We nestled in at about 15 minutes to showtime. Perfect.

Out first was Blondshell.

https://www.blondshellmusic.com/

Her first song was a strong rocker.

A few things were apparent from the get go. First, I liked it. Second, vocally it was almost almost unintelligible from a sound perspective. This gave me pause for the Liz Phair to come. Third, there were 2 pods of people directly behind us who would no shut the hell up.

This leads me to the eternal notion of… if you are gonna come to a show and talk to your buddy throughout then I don’t really know if you understand what is happening. Your missing the show and making everyone around you who IS there to listen to the show CRAZY! Stop it.

At any rate, after the first track things slowed down a bit, but it was still very good. The band was good and aside from the vocals that seemed to drift and swirl around us more like vocal art pieces I really did dig it.

When she took off her jacket Alan noticed that she was wearing a Paul McCartney and Wings t-shirt. This got her bonus points.

Thank you’s all around and then Sabrina Mae Teitelbaum (her real name) and band left the stage and the changeover began.

About 9:15 the lights went down and Liz Phair began.

I had to laugh as I added this shot to the post. It is clearly marked on the paper about her set lists. Seattle. I bet she has one of these each night so she knows where she is.

Miraculously, the sound was far superior to the Blondshell set. The talkers were somewhat quieter, but still annoying.

The songs from the band were very tight and she charged into “Exile In Guyville” and we were off.

The songs were great of course since the album is great and the crowd was totally into it. There were some guitar changes and someone came out to play that keyboard on the right and I was super impressed. It was so cool to see the album live. Liz’s voice was still sharp and it was very interesting the way she used those odd tunings and chord progressions that always set that album apart and made it stick in your head forever.

My camera phone did pretty good considering there was blue light flooding the stage most of the time. However, of the 100 pictures I took, represented here are the best 15. Please forgive the graininess of some, but I liked the shots.

I liked this one during a song she was just singing on with her in front of the “Exile In Guyville” cover shot on the bass drum.

It’s a different feel when you are seeing a show where someone is playing an album in full since you know where you are in the setlist. I found myself anticipating the next track, getting more bummed as we approached the latter half of the album.

The talkers seemed to ramp up a little and despite several disapproving full on eye-contact glares they did not stop. I’m not advocating a special place in hell, but someone sometime who is not a Midwesterner probably will.

There were some acoustic tracks that required guitar changes.

When the full album was complete, there were waves and smiles and the band exited. There was a short wait while we clapped and hooted for more and Liz obliged.

It was then that I considered putting the night shot setting on when using my camera and got some shots that I wish I had been getting all along.

She did “Supernova”, “Johhny Feelgood”, “Go West” and ended on “Why Can’t I”. It was spectacular.

Liz Phair brought it. After the rough start during Blondshell, her set was fantastic and she brought “Exile In Guyville” to life for us all.

Bravo Liz !

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