MEOW MIX: Cat Power, Starlight Ballroom, Last Night CLICK TO ENLARGE
1. She was late. Like, almost an hour late. Yeah, yeah, she’s not the first rock star nor the last to make her adoring public earn their audience with her. But it did let a lot of the goodwill out of the room before she even sang a note. After a while, somebody shouted out “Stop playing fucking Motown singles and get your ass on stage!”
2. Their stage manager is a Napoleonic douche bag that just plain oozes bad rock karma. Trust me on this.
3. The band totally overwhelmed Chan Marshall’s vocals. The dubiously-named Dirty Delta Blues Band is something of an indie-rock supergroup — Judah Bauer from the Blues Explosion on guitar, Jim White from Dirty Three on drums, Gregg Foreman from Delta 72 on Hammond organ, and Eric Papparozzi on bass — if this were still 1999. They sounded like one of those loud-ass muscle cars from the ’70s that are fun as hell to drive but a bitch to parallel park.
4. Her bewitching vocal timbre retains its siren-like capacity to lure men’s souls to smash their nuts on the rocks of unrequited dreaminess, which only made the fact that she wore her backing band like The Seven Veils all the more an irksome tease. She never took it all off. Dunno if the soundman was somewhat deaf or Chan insists on having her vocal relegated to the background. Either way, it felt like going to visit some genius problem child only to find she refuses to come out of her bedroom and will only talk to you through the door.
5. Despite the years, black, fingerless leather gloves remain a very serious fashion hazard for anyone not named Rocky Balboa or Karate Kid.
TEXT BY JONATHAN VALANIA/PHOTOS BY JUSTIN ROMAN