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| �Very Little To Say Today� Review: Jude: Live At Largo - April 9, 2002 (Los Angeles, CA) (this review was originally posted to the jude discuss yahoo group) Well, Valentina and I arrived at the club about an hour or so before Jude went on to perform. Because I had called TWICE for reservations and was never called back for confirmation, we sat at the bar and ordered drinks. After about a half hour, I noticed that the two large booth-style tables near the side of the stage were empty and didn�t even have place settings (napkins, knives, forks, etc.) so I asked Valentina go to the doorman (PJ) and ask him if we could sit at the closest booth. He said yes, so we moved over and had GREAT ring-side seats without having to pay the price for dinner. (Thank goodness for the small Tuesday night crowds.) Shortly after we got situated, Jude appeared onstage and was introduced by one of Largo�s employees (Memo, or something to that effect...nice guy!) Jude immediately went into song, starting with: 01. I�m Sorry Now - which he started a little different, in light of Memo�s introduction. �Welcome to Memo�s world, won�t you please find a seat?� 02. Love Letters 03. George - he added a falsetto-laden bridge to this song...it sounded familiar...I think it might have been random lines from other people�s songs...I�m not sure though. After �George,� he switched guitars, telling us that he just got his guitar back, which he was sure meant nothing to us but meant the world to him. (For me, someone who�s first guitar just broke apparently beyond repair, I understood his reason for joy.) But the guitar was out of tune, so he had to tune it....this is really beginning to become a low part of his shows...apparently stumped for something to say, he was like: �So Isreal, huh? That shit�s going really well..� He then went on to say �Some nights are story-night, but I think tonight is song-night.� 04. Cuba After �Cuba,� he asked Ben Kashava to come out and join him on guitar. He said to Ben, �I think I�ve brought them (the audience) down, but I think I know how to bring them up.� Then he broke into the Kenny Roger�s cover of: 05. Lucille - he only played the first verse and chorus of this Kenny Roger�s song, but it somehow made an appearance in practically every song to follow that night. 06. Indian Lover 07. Out Of LA After this, Jude sat at the piano and said �Okay, which of my four piano songs should I play?� And I called out for �Sarah Goodnight,� to which he kind of whispered �but that�s so hard to play.� Then someone else yelled out for �Number Two,� and he was like, okay, I�ll play �number two.� 08. Sarah Goodnight segued into My Room - a new song...the second verse was improvised however, and was basically Jude asking Ben to come back and play guitar for him 09. Dance Floor - Jude said that usually when he gets to the big chorus, the band kicks in, but since was just him and Ben on guitar, it was gonna be an �unplugged� moment. So when Ben was playing a little melody on the guitar, Jude was like �yeah, I hear that.� Also, they added echo-effects to his voice during the chorus. At the end of this song, he added the chorus from �Lucille.� 10. King Of Yesterday - very beautiful with the piano and guitar After Jude got back to his guitar, he said, while tuning his guitar: �If you�re here for the first time tonight seeing me because you heard that I tell all these great funny stories and stuff, I have to apologize. I�m not in a bad mood...I just have very little to say today.� 11. Rick James - a funny thing I�ve noticed whenever Jude performs this song...he always backs away from the microphone when singing �Rick James was the original super...� so that you can never hear the word �freak.� In fact, I don�t even think he ever actually sings the word �freak� until the big finish at the end. Just a little thing I noticed in my obsessive nature. Another thing I�ve noticed is that whenever Jude plays this song, it�s usually followed by: 12. I Know - during this song, Ben switched from playing guitar to bass. Also, Jude skipped the middle verse (�tell me how you really feel...�) 13. Everything�s All Right - Jude said to Ben before this song, that he felt this crowd was a very vocal one (a half-filled club on a Tuesday night...yeah right!) so he wanted to get them singing. He was saying how whenever you go to a college tour, they send you to a seminar of sorts on how to get the crowd going. An instructor recommended that if he wants to be pro, he has to get the crowd singing, which prompted Jude not to have a sing-along at his shows for at least a month because he wasn�t sure if he wanted to be �pro.� But he said he was playing a few colleges later in the month, so he needed the practice...which led him to say �yeah, that�s the kind of amped up precursor I like to give to get my crowds to sing along with me.� He ended up having the girls in the club sing the �ba ba ba� horn section and the guys sing the �da da da da da� section. He seemed very funnily annoyed with himself for spliting the room between guys and girls. Also during the song, when the crowd wasn�t singing loudly, he said, �I don�t know, San Francisco sang pretty loud.� But that didn�t phase the crowd. He said �Whenever I play one city, I can always get them louder when I compare them to another city they hate, but I can�t do that in L.A. Who do you hate? He listed a bunch of cities, asking if we hated them, and the answer was no. San Francisco? No. New York? Not anymore. Topeka, Kansas? No. Canada? Sure, why not! Jude said that one town he was not too fond of was Austin, Texas, because whenever he hit Texas, people would always say to him �Hey y�all gonna love it down in Texas, it�s great...for YOU KIND OF PEOPLE� which he guessed was because in Austin, they don�t stone gay people in the streets. (singers = gay people) But then he said that he�s had really great times in Austin, so he was torn. He also added a bit of �Lucille� into the end of this song. After �EA,� Jude told a story about Ben, and how after Sept. 11th, they were stuck in a plane above New York and directed over to North Carolina, where they were stuck for about a week. While together, they talked about doing all kinds of things, like making three different albums of different types of music and releasing them at the same time, or about stopping playing video games and start working out. After a night of drinking, he and the band-mates were trying to come up with names for the band, and decided on Jude and The Ben Kashava experience. In their drunken stupor, they all thought this was the greatest thing ever. But the next morning, Ben came to Jude, and asked if the could talk, asking him if he was actually serious about naming the band that. Jude laughed it off, saying no, they were drunk, but afterwards was confused on how he should take Ben not wanting his name attached to the band :) Jude then asked if there was anything anybody wanted to hear and they�d try to fake their way through it. Requests included �The Not So Pretty Princess,� �Battered Broken,� and �Prophet,� which were all greeted with �No.� Valentina kept yelling for �Prophet,� and Jude was like �No...no...NO!� Then played it anyway. Oh, before he sang it though, someone else called out for �Lucille,� and Jude laughed, saying �Yeah, Lucille...ONE MORE TIME!� It was a cute moment. 14. Prophet - one of the greatest songs Jude does live. fact. Jude started playing the opening chords of �Your Eyes,� but once he was just about to get into it, he sad �I gotta tune, I�m sorry.� So he tuned, bemoaned about how they were really getting into that song, then after he was done tuning, said how he couldn�t go back into that song, so he played this one instead: 15. Love Love Love - which seems to be a crowd-pleaser. at the beginning of the song, he played with the foot pedals at the foot of the stage, he said �I have no idea what I�m doing there, but it just looks more professional if I do that.� He also mixed some of �Life Lays Me Down� in this song. 16. Your Eyes After this song, he thanked the audience and said good-night, leaving the stage. But of course, he came back out for a few more songs. He joked about the magical happenings that occur during the moments that he leaves the stage...and asks the doorman PJ to help show the crowd what he means. So Jude opened the stage door, and PJ yelled �Get back out there!� Jude said that just for that, PJ was going to have to sing a song with him. Jude consulted his setlist and decided which song PJ would be joining in on. 17. Bye Bye - a classic which hasn�t been heard in a long time! In the middle of the second verse, Jude stopped and had PJ come up on stage with him. Jude sang the chorus for him as an example, then PJ sang it in a big Irish accent. Before this song, Jude was showing off the new features on his old guitar, again acknowledging that most of the crowd didn�t care, but for the guitar dudes, it was big business. Jude asked if there was anything else people wanted hear. I called out for �The Rider Comes� and Jude responded �Do you think you could pick something LESS obscure and unfinished of mine so I could completely f*ck it up?� Someone else called out for �Brad And Suzy.� Jude began tuning his guitar for a good long while...then in his best SNL-sketch voice, he said �Good times.� (cue audience laughter) �Hey, remember back in 2002, when we were seeing Jude, and we just had our drinks, and they were just up there tuning and stuff for like five minutes. Yeah, good times. Memories.� 18. Brad And Suzy - he inserted �professional-audience-sing-along-songs� �Jack and Diane,� �I Feel Like Making Love,� and �Groove Is In The Heart,� none of which really got the crowd going the way Jude apparently wanted. (He compared the room to being a room full of Linda McCartneys.) Before the third �insert� song, Jude said he�d give the crowd another song, since everything should come in threes, including �Jude�s stretch-out middle song bull$hit thing.� After this, he thanked the audience once more, and left the stage for good. Valentina hung out a little after the show, waiting for Jude to show up. We got to say �hey� to a couple friends before Jude showed up. Val and I walked over, and Val asked if he remembered her and he said yeah. Valentina told him how hot he looked with his new haircut and then proceeded to rub his head :) After Jude signed some stuff for us, I told him I had three quick questions for him, and he said to go ahead and ask. So I proceeded to ask for song titles to the songs I�ve given the titles to as �Dancing Around,� �Perfect Plank,� and �My Love Won�t End.� He said DA was called �Waltz,� and that he�d given up on it but had been bringing it out more lately. �Perfect Plank� was called �Perfect Plank� (right on for me!) and �My Love Won�t End� is untitled at the moment...even though I called it that, I suggested �More Than Only Me,� and he said he�d consider it :) So after that, Valentina asked if he�d be coming back to Largo after his college tour. He said he wasn�t sure, because the crowds were getting smaller and smaller, and he wasn�t doing his best at advertising and letting people know about the shows. I told him that if he was playing at Largo, he�d be certain to at least see us. He gave me an �aw thanks� look, then we parted ways :) So that�s it. I know it took a long time for this review...but I had some other stuff going on...like my all around laziness. One more show to go...then Jude finally hits the road...it�ll be quite a relief on my wallet!! |