| Harper Ave. rychard's rants, raves + reviews |
| "Saturday Night Live" Jude: Live At Largo - Saturday, August 3rd, 2002 (this review was originally posted to the jude discuss yahoo fan list) During the last few months, anytime Jude has played Largo, it has generally been on a Tuesday or Wednesday night. The result of these mid-work-week concerts have been small, intimate crowds. Some nights, not even all of the tables in the small club were full. I mention this to highlight the contrast between these midweek shows and last weekend's Saturday night show. The club was packed. Every table filled to the maximum. The bar overfilling with patrons. Even a celebrity or two showed up for the concert! I arrived at the concert around nine o'clock with my friend Valentina, and three of her girlfriends. We were escorted to the side bar, and we took our seats, looking forward to the show! Before the show got underway, however, I had the opportunity to meet Estelle, the creator of Jude's first French Jude fan site! I also was able to get reacquainted with Cameo (AKA Cathy) and her sister Annie! Moments later, the show began with Jude introducing the night's opening act: Chris Stills. Mr. Stills is the same singer who opened for Alanis Morissette at The Whisky in January this year when Jude was supposed to open. He seemed much more in his element at Largo for the Jude crowd than he did at the Whisky for the Alanis crowd. Chris played for about just over a half an hour, playing some great songs, and going to town on his guitar and the piano! During Chris Still's set, I noticed a group of three people being escorted to their reserved table. For some reason, I focused in on the group, and was dumbfounded to discover that the "leader" of the group was Ellen DeGeneres!! (In a very stylin' green and orange striped shirt -- classic Ellen!) I was absolutely floored! And then, after Chris Stills left the stage, Valentina noticed a man approaching the back of the club. After a close look, we determined it was Jack Black, of Tenacious D and "Shallow Hal" fame! At the back of the club, we watched as Jack Black and Jude shared a few words! They seemed friendly with each other, and it made me wonder how many times Jack Black and/or Ellen had showed up at these Largo shows and I just didn't notice! Anyway, eventually the owner of the club, Flannigan, took the stage to introduce Jude. Flannigan: "This man behind me as a vision, but he's very shy so you need to encourage him. Please put your hands together for Jude!" Jude took the mic with his acoustic guitar attached, and broke into: 1. "Sit-Ups" - After some guitar sound problems, Jude really got into this rarely performed song. He flubbed the lyrics a little in the second verse, but handled it like the pro he is! At the end of Sit-Ups, he tried unsuccessfully to segue into "I Know," but messed up. Either the guitar was out of tune, or he screwed up the chords, I'm not sure, because it sounded fine to me...lol! He introduced that mistake as "smooth transition fucked up, number one!" Glancing at some notes he brought up on stage with him, he mentioned that he had plans to do some "unfinished stuff," but before he went into that, he'd go into some more familiar work. 2. "I Know" - funny moment here, when as Jude was playing the guitar intro to the song, the sound guy had to tell him over the loudspeaker to turn the guitar speaker on. Jude gets this sheepish look on his face as he realizes that the people in the club couldn't hear well what he was playing. He said that that was the new "alternative" sound - to go from quiet to loud, though in that case he said, it went "from silence...to quiet....to this:" and started singing a beautiful rendition of the song. 3. "Rick James" followed immediately after "I Know." After the song, he mentioned that one of his fake thumbnails ripped off during that performance, and that sometimes in middle of performing, his thoughts go from the song to "fuck, my thumb! fuck, my thumb!" 4. Jude took this moment (while tuning his guitar) to talk about the official Jude's site: "Questions For Jude" section. He told him how Ginger had mentioned a friend of his sending in questions like: "Jude, why are the bitches so whack?" And "Jude, why doesn't God just kick the devil's ass once and for all?" and "Jude, why do you talk bullshit like this when you should just be tuning your guitar as quickly as possible." He then asked for requests, and answered Valentina and her pal's request for "Prophet." As he switched from his acoustic to electric guitar, one of Val's friends remarked about all that tuning going for nothing. 5. "Prophet" was an energy-filled performance, and included an extended falsetto during the climax of the song. 6. "Your Eyes" - Jude remarked before he sang it that he was going to try and get through the rarely performed bridge. This was an amazing performance of the song, though I think he messed up on the bridge because while trying to transcribe the lyrics, they just don't make a whole lot of sense! After playing "Your Eyes," Jude moved over to the piano, and looked contemplative, like he was trying to decide what to play. After a few random hits of the piano keys, Jude finally decided on: 7. "Dancing With The Devil" - I have to admit I was a little giddy as I noticed several people in the audience mouthing the words while Jude sang. He skipped the middle verse, and sang the last verse in it's place, so when it came time to sing the last verse after the bridge, he just stopped, and went into a rendition of: 8. "King Of Yesterday" - this song is beautiful as played on the piano. truly beautiful. 9. "On The Dance Floor" came right onto the last note of "KOY" and during the middle of the song, he stopped playing to retell the story of his trip to Germany and of how a friend encouraged him to play a disco song. A VERY funny moment here as Jude imitates the German people singing the chorus of the song *in German!!* After that song, Jude went back up to the guitar mic and asked for more requests. "Turn The Radio On" was called out, and Jude took the request, moving back to the piano. Here I became very antsy, because this is a very beautiful song that did not get recorded when Jude premiered it a couple months ago because dummy me left my recorder at home! 10. "Turn The Radio On" - some of the lyrics I remember from the first performance were either rewritten, or forgotten, but overall, it was a beautiful rendition of the song, and was pretty much guaranteed a spot in this week's upcoming MP3s Of The Week on my site :) Jude picked up his guitar after that song and performed: 11. "I Do." Another ask for requests, and Jude was answered with a few people calling out for "Cuba." Jude agreed with the request and picked up a different acoustic guitar and went into 12. "Cuba" which he know only refers to as "The Expensive Song." 13. "Out Of LA" came next, with Jude having some difficulty with the guitar at first. He played a very extended ending, and the song lasted a bit longer than usual. This is where the show became kind of weird...because Jude started playing the songs that he normally plays at the beginning of a show, just after he played songs like "I Do" and "Out Of LA" which normally come at the end of the show. Okay, that's not weird...just a random piece of non-trivia for a Jude freak like me! 14. "I'm Sorry Now" was first, and Jude messed up the chords during the bridge, which led to some impromptu lyrics. 15. "You Mama You" came right after that, followed by 16. "George" which featured the rarely performed bridge about "turning the light off," "the sad tears of a clown," and "the guy who's hanging around." At this point Jude again asked for request, and since there was silence, I decided to call out for him to perform "The Ellen Show Theme Song." I quickly looked over to where Ellen was sitting, and she looked slightly embarrassed, but kept a cute smile on her face as her girlfriend (I think) put her arm around her. 17. "The Ellen Show Theme Song" - Jude said it was a very simple song and went into it (it consists mainly of "ba ba ba ba's.") He also mimicked the slide guitar. He seemed to be having a lot of fun with the song, and mentioned the different variations they considered for the opening theme. He then said that this is the type of discussion that was "just for him," and that if Fate were there on the slide, it'd be a moment for them, and that's when the audience realizes that musicians are just drunk guys in disguise. 18. "In Between" came immediately after the theme song. 19. "Everything's All Right" came after that, and did not feature the audience singing along. It was kind of a nice change of pace to hear the song performed with just Jude and his guitar without the audience. It also made for a better recording. After that, he left the stage, and was immediately greeted off-stage with calls for an encore. Moments later Jude came back out, re-mentioning his plan to do a night of unfinished stuff, but then went into 20. "Gay Cowboy" instead. OF COURSE my eye wandered over to Ellen during this, and she was laughing a lot during the song! Jude then went over to the piano, and mentioned that Flannigan (Largo club owner) had requested for Jude to write a song for Largo. He mentioned that Flannigan was a Radiohead fan, and that the song he wrote for Largo was really "moody." Jude then played some funny piano notes and went into a very funny song 21. "The Largo Song" - which was very funny! This will also be an MP3 this week! 22. Jude finished his set with "Sarah Goodnight" and afterwards bid the audience "goodnight." I REALLY wanted to at the very least say "hi" to Ellen after the show, but she was out of there in an instant! She was kind of funny during the show, because whenever anybody started talking, she'd go over to them and ask them to please be quiet. Normally I'd think "whoa...diva!" But in the case of Jude, it's completely understandable! After the show, me, Valentina, her three friends, Estelle, Cameo, Annie, Adam and his brother all created this "circle of jude fans" while waiting for Jude to come out to the bar. Finally, Val and two of her friends approached Jude, followed by Estelle and I. Jude gave me a firm handshake and noticing my long hair, asked me if I was growing my hair out. Cue the giddy schoolboy smile from me. Jude then recognized Estelle as "Estelle from France" and pointed her out to Ginger, who was immediately accosted by me in a quick hug as I realized that that was Ginger-Ginger! After a few pictures with Jude, he finally moved on to some other fans, and the "LA Legion of Jude Fans" gathered for some great conversation! It's too bad that Meggie, Cate, and Andrea (among others from here) weren't there to complete the group! All in all, it was a great show, highlighted by the presence of celebrities and fantastic new songs! Thank you to Jude for a wonderful night, and to all the great people I had the opportunity to talk with! |