Natalie Merchant “I am not famous” comes to Chicago.
Natalie Merchant the former singer from 10,000 Maniacs came to Chicago, Il on July 22, 2010 to perform at the Chicago Theater. During the day she made a appearance at Borders Books to sign copies of her new CD. During the appearance there were a grade school child (Collin) who walked up to her with a card. He told her that a couple of years ago for a class assignment they were asked to write to a famous person. Since his favorite singer was Natalie it was the person he wanted to write. He wrote to her and she answer him back. And now they meet for the first time in person. Collin had met his favorite famous person.
That night at the Chicago Theater Natalie started her performance with songs from her new CD “Leave Your Sleep” which is a double CD of little known poets set to music. Being a double CD, the show was a very long show. In the beginning of the show only thing she performed was songs from her new CD. Which was great. To me it give me memories of 10,000 Maniacs the way I saw them back in Buffalo NY back in 1978 in a small church on Delaware Ave. Natalie being happy with her performance, she was dancing and having the audience put input into the show.
During the show she started each song with a slide of the poetic and a image them with family or friends. This give the audience a inside of who each poetic was and why she wrote music to their poem. During the performance she introduce Collin to the crowd and explain how they became friends. And during the performance she had Collin come on stage and read of the intros of a couple of the poetics.
The first part of the show lasted almost 2 hours. Then they came back and to performed her hits. Which included a try at Kansas “Dust in the Wind”, which was from a suggestion from one of the audience members. Yes she took suggestions, because she wanted to make this show a memorable one for the audience. One of the funnies moment during the show, she took a audience member camera phone and started to delete photos of herself from the camera. Then she took the phone and took photos of the bands and had the audience member retake her photo. And she made a good point if you have control on how your photo should look direct the person on how to take it.
Overall the show was one of the best shows of the year for me. And since I see about 20 shows a month. That is something to listen to.
-Read the full story at UnRatedMagazine.com
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