knoxville show

Review by Katie Gordon (Switch to
)
2/3/2003

There are certainly a lot of mixed experiences with the recent tour. I had a great time at the show, thought Todd's voice, energy, and personality were just what I hoped for - but then I've been unable to go to a Todd concert since I moved here from Chicago, 15 years ago, so it's kind of like finding the oasis in the desert. My only disappointment with Todd was that I was really, really, hoping to hear him sing Hawking. What a perfect song for a simple piano accompaniment. Yes, Dream Goes On was fine, but Hawking would have been special. Loved Love in Action and the Wheel.

Yes, his voice was good. Yes, it was really low key. Yes, he screwed up Hello, It's Me - but I suspect that since he has had to play this song a zillion times, and has had a good deal of practice on this tour, that the Hello screw ups may be an intentional "joke" on us all. (I don't mind.) After all, he let at least one person think they affected the playlist: after someone called out "love in action," and some other stuff, Todd said, "I might just play one of those songs, even though it's a stupid idea." Ditto for the Wheel. "You guys might start thinking I'm really paying attention to you."

But, the truth is - the sound guy or the sound system was terrible. As the News Sentinel review pointed out, there was no clarity in Todd's amplified voice. It got better as the show went on, but never great. That meant that people who did not already know every song would have had little sense of what they lyrics were, which is a major part of Todd's music. Lysistrata for instance - someone there who didn't know Todd only got the "no war" part and couldn't understand any of the other lyrics.

And the MP3 business. I don't mind Todd using prerecorded stuff. One of the first times I saw him, in Chicago, he sang the whole first half of the show with a tape, great sound, lots of Something/anything stuff, and then brought out Utopia after a break. This time, the sound stunk - and I was in the acoustically best place of the theater. The MP3 player was so loud that the back up singers were about twice as loud as Todd, and half the time you could barely hear him. I also think that synthesizer music works better on recording than traditional instrumentation, which these days does have a bit of a "karaoke" feel to it.

I also agree with the other reviewer that we are certainly getting old. I haven't been in a peer age group in a long, long time, and when I got there and saw an entire audience that was 45-55 years old, I was shocked to see what we looked like!


Other reviews for Miscellaneous Dates 2003
2/1/2003 - Tennessee Theatre - Knoxville, TN

Other reviews for overall Solo dates 2003

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