You Should've Been There: Cat Power [McDonald Theatre; 4/12/2008]

Going to see a Cat Power concert is like going to see Michelangelo's David or the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao: Her voice is about as otherworldly beautiful as we're to find in this time, on this planet. And her show last Saturday at the McDonald Theatre certainly felt like we had gathered to witness this oddity of nature, this soul singer in the most purest sense, in a somewhat museum-like experience. VIEW MORE TEXT (by me) & PIX (by Todd Cooper) AFTER THE JUMP.

For starters, this was one of most subdued McDonald crowds I'd ever seen. Even with the venue at near capacity, the stillness in the audience was palpable. Everybody was craning their necks to follow Chan Marshall's every move (especially the very tall, shaved-head dude in the front, pictured above, who never took his eye off the singer). With the spotlight only used sparingly (Marshall has been known for her stagefright), Cat Power's mystique-level only heightened. Down in the front row, digital cameras and cameraphones were raised high in the air as Marshall strutted from stage left to stage right to stage center. I'm pretty sure many, many people have close-up shots of Chan on their hard drives from that night (or, if they were lucky to get a balcony seat, a wide-angle shot). Our own photographer, Todd Cooper, was also on the scene (all pix are his copyright, please give credit if you share).

The setlist for the night was pretty much culled straight from Cat Power's recent album, Jukebox. Consisting mostly of cover songs, the album isn't her strongest work. But it didn't matter on Saturday night, because we all came to hear the voice and to see her for ourselves. It was what I like to call "swaying music" and highly conducive to the cliched lighters-in-the-air thing. Funny then, that Cat Power had to get out her own lighter and flash it in the air before a handful of people brought out their own. The people were in a trance or something.

The ending to the show was probably the oddest I've seen in a while. As the band walked off-stage, Marshall named them off (in her mumbling manner) and then proceeded to pick up anything on the stage that was going to be tossed into the trash anyway and instead toss it into the crowd for "keepsakes." These items included a bouquet of flowers, setlists duct-taped to the floor, the lyrics to Cat Power's newest, unrecorded song (so new she needed the lyrics to it) and I think she even threw her plastic cup (that held the whiskey she wasn't supposed to be drinking) into the crowd. Cat Power took many bows. She didn't want to leave us. For a shy performer, she sure loves the attention.

JUDAH BAUER (of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) on guitar

APPALOOSA

Appaloosa opened the show (and naturally I missed it).