Damien Rice in Chile: Music is the voice of soul... And other parts of the body...
Damien told us this story...
Of being given a million Chilean pesos when you're 13...
And then being given a million Chilean pesos everyday for a year...
So when you're 14 you have 365 million Chilean pesos...
And then, they tell you 'Behave yourself, don't do anything bad with those pesos'
"But you have a penis... You've got a million of sperms...
And the next day, you've got another million of sperms...
And another million of sperms... Is it possible to carry 365 millions of sperms?
And they tell you to behave yourself... 'Spend your sperm wisely'..."
And he started singing The Professor...
Which is the first song from Damien I ever heard, I guess... I love that song...
When he started the story, I knew he would go for this song.
Impossible not to know with those lyrics........
The song went fluent and easy on his voice...
His French at the last two verses is always really English,
But it still sounds cool for the song and its meaning...
The first two songs were Insane, which I honestly didn't recognise
And Older Chests... Which I totally loved when I listened to it live...
Damien Rice does not do the kind of music you love for its complexity.
He is not a 'magicien' of guitar, going all speedy and showy...
He is just this almost skinny guy with messy hair and his acoustic guitar on stage...
Literally.
No Tomo or Shane or Vivienne in this "South American Tour"
And I use the quoting marks coz he was actually visiting a friend in Brazil
"And I decided to make some lives since I was here...."
*sigh* He's always like that..... I like it that way.....
I like people just enjoying doing music...
Although I'm not certainly used to someone deciding on stage which song to sing next...
The live of Damien Rice in Chile last January 28th was full of these silent moments...
Damien watching the ceiling or eyes closed...
Humming... Obviously thinking about what to sing next...
And the live was also full of funny stories...
(He's quite a good actor, I must say)
The second story was about a couple...
Making it REALLY short,
It's a girl in a country, the guy in another...
The guy goes to a party and sees this girl who also came alone........................
A story about this almost magical instance for you to cheat on your girl (or guy)...
"You don't.... But you want to!!
But you don't... But you fucking want to!!"
This was the introduction for 9 Crimes
The guitar version was as good as the piano version for me...
But I must admit the piano gives the song a feeling that guitar can't express in this case: Melancholy.
Damien mostly sounds angry when he is singing with his guitar, I'd say...
But I can't avoid falling for that...
"A guy bleeding his life out through his guitar"
The sentence my cousin Alonso used that Wednesday, before the live.....
Folk?? I dunno, I so don't care... I really don't care about styles...
If I like this guy's style, I won't necessarily go for all the other guys who sing like that...
We were just talking about music........
Damien's voice is amazingly strong and touching at the same time...
I wasn't really excited about the live the days before,
because Damien's music isn't something which will surprise me...
But it certainly gives me what I want from it: feeling.
The next songs were Skimo, Elephant, Amie, Coconut Skin and Volcano...
In Coconut Skin, Damien was already freaking out about people having cameras
((I had my fangirl moment in some other band's live in Valparaíso and stopped there...
I don't think I will ever use a camera again.... -a thought not a promise though lol))
The thing is I felt really bad when he stopped the song to ask people to let him sing
"One song, just one song... Let us all be here tonight and forget about the outside world for at least one song"
In Volcano he decided to take people on the stage:
"all those who DON'T have a camera, come on stage"
I didn't have a camera, but I sat in front of him instead going on stage......
I was already in first row, so I just moved in front of him.....
Boring fan I am -lol
The stage was full of people -who looked the hell happy by the way ^w^
And this Irish drunk guy with a guitar separated them in groups and made them sing...
Amazing thing!! It sounded cool....
The next song was I Remember...
Great song. Great performance.
Except for the choice of a chord which didn't sound right for the impromptu he did in the outro...
But just a detail...... His voice was overwhelming.....
Someone said something about Lisa...
It sounded like "Better with Lisa" instead "Better THAN with Lisa"
Which is the sentence I think the guy wanted to say...
Anyway.... That was out of topic... So unnecessary...
Another story to introduce Rootless Tree...
A story about how someone who loves you stay silent about your mistakes,
But then suddenly they get sick of you and give all that shit back to you......
I always enjoy Rootless Tree's live performances...
Dunno why... It doesn't matter how he plays the song...
The only bad thing is when he doesn't say FUCK YOU and goes all censored for tv.......
Next, Damien asked for amplification to be turned off....
He unplugged his guitar and came to the very front of the stage...
And he sang The Blower's Daughter...
And the 'only his voice and his guitar' became absolutely literal...
Probably the most magical moment of the night....
I felt really closed to him when I listened to him that way...
His voice was astonishing....... He finished the song.... He left.....
And came back for the encore...
I'm not really into Cannonball, but when he sang Accidental Babies right after
I almost died!!!!!!!! ..... I love that song!!... It is so boring and crude....
And then Delicate.... Just on time to finish with the great Cheers Darlin'
He had two red wine bottles with him
And drank them with a guy and a girl from the audience in stage...
"I dunno what Im doin'", "I'm really drunk!", "Does somebody remember the lyrics?"
Damien's Cheers Darlin' was amazing and amusing... Perfect!!
The track was on his Ipod and he was drinking and smoking...
And the wonderful "BITCH" he shouted at the girl was hilarious...
I had seen him doing that before in vids, but I wouldn't say it was fake...
I'd say he really likes getting drunk and doing the song like that...
Maybe I'm wrong..... Who knows..... I don't know.......
I just know I seriously enjoyed that live............
Although it was like having a stupidly cool shot of music...
And then the effects of the dosis went too fast................
Odd thing.......
I think I couldn't write about it before because of that:
I was drugged with Damien's music
x-posted to: Myspace