Set List - Event Outline

Here is the set list for this event, which was part of Tori's TOAL promotion in the U.K. Many thanks to Richard Galbraith who called me with the set list, as well as to Lucy and Deborah, who were the first to email me the set list. (The set lists people sent to me were in many different orders. I think the one you see below is the true order of how she performed them!)

Interview Part 1

Angels
Jackie's Strength
Winter

Interview Part 2

Silent All These Years
Take To The Sky (with "I Feel The Earth Move Under My Feet")
Seaside
Pretty Good Year
Cooling

Commentary and Reviews

Here are some reports from people at the event:

From Desirableking:

I'm glad to send you the set list and some info about this incredible show.

Shaw Theatre
presentation of Tori's work

Interview (Part 1) about America,Cornwall,Angels,Playboy Mommy(very moving story, she explains the different betwwen this song then and now) and Graham Norton (there is a line betwwen them, literally)

Angels (incredible!)
Jackie's strength
Winter

Interview (Part 2) about the multis, how she compose her songs,The story of Seaside,Pretty Good Year (very hard to play lately), Cooling (one of her favourites,didn't make Librarian because the multi was worse than the live version) and the rejection of Honey from UTP

SATY
Seaside
Take to the sky/I feel the earth move (the best best best best version ever, really!))
Pretty good year
Cooling

(End of the show)
It was a dream made true, really great show, very intimate and Tori looked radiant

From Mike Snowden:

Short but very sweet....

in the very early morning, we queued. I was there around 6:30am, and there were about 50 people in front of me. By 10, there were probably a couple of hundred, and some went disappointed. The people around me queue were very friendly, and we didn't get bored by a 4-hour wait. They finally issued us with numbered wristbands "for later ticket exchange in band order", doors 7:00pm for 8:00pm . Finally got mine and left about 10:40.

I returned about 6:30pm. For more than an hour, the queue gradually got sorted into order while they checked bands. There were a few counterfeits around - someone must have swiped some of the printed stock and sold it on - and some very disappointed people. We got in just before 8pm. The Shaw theatre has around 450 seats, about 100 of which were allocated to guests, who had been let in promptly. It felt very appropriate to come back to the theatre where Tori started the 1992 UK "Little Earthquakes" tour and we first saw her.

The Bosey was set up on stage with 4 big monitors around the stool, 2 easy chairs in front for the interview, and another solo high stool that wasn't used. Two small stacks hung from the rig, and some simple lights illuminated the stage.

The interview started around 8:45. Lucy O'Brien talked about Tori and her, and read a short interview out from one of her books Tori came on in a black dress with gauze and a silver corsety slip. We got about 15 minutes of interesting conversation, among other things about finding the Multis (multi-track masters), the ethic behind what they did with them, being American in Cornwall, the sensing of a girl's spirit inspiring a particular song, then three numbers, more talk - this time on the way she writes and how songs came to her ("2 bar segments", "The world's greatest crossword puzzle... which is probably why they sometimes don't make sense") and thinking about doing the Dracula trail; culling good songs incorrectly on bad advice; which songs are live and which studio, "Playboy Mommy" and bad times; the election in Florida in particular ("I voted for Nader"); the "found" string tracks on SATY being "a kiss from the other side" by Frank Sinatra's now-deceased arranger; that she is now working on a book, on the nature of production with an ex-"NY Times" writer, then 5 final numbers and off around 10:15pm.

The whole thing was filmed - two beta cams and a camcorder, so it may be available later.

Music:

Angels
Winter
Jackie's Strength

Silent All These Years
Pretty Good Year
Take to the Sky/I feel the Earth move
Seaside
Cooling

Sound quality was exceptionally good, and Tori was in the best form I've seen her for several tours. Some of the versions were slightly different, and a couple of high sustained notes were avoided, in "Winter" in particular, but this was the most I've enjoyed the performance since the Royal Festival Hall gig. She seemed very relaxed and in total command - definitely worth the long, long day.

From Leah:

it was an amazing night! we started queueing just before 6am, with about 40 people in front of us and ended up with central 3rd row seat! when buying our tickets we were given green, numbererd wristbands, the idea being that when we returned in the evening we would enter in numerical order. only when we did return everything was a mess and the people who worked at the theatre had absolutely no control over the queue, and refused to let anyone in. at one point on security guy threatened to cancel the show if it wasn't sorted out. it wasn't until someone actually stepped out of the queue (hurray for marcus!) and talked people into moving that they started letting people in. when most people had found their seats in the theatre, something unexpected happened!

"this in an emergency announcement: everybody please evacuate the building" (or something along those lines).

the first time everybody laughs, it's a joke, right? the second time everybody is like "uh, ok..." and then with the third announcement an alarm started sounding and security started evacuating the building! luckily, only about 20-30 people had actually left when the manager came in and told everyone to get back in their seats. false alrm- someone had been smoking in the toilets!

finally, lucy o.brien came about about 8.45 and did a short introduction about tori. tori came out a few minutes later and everything was underway! i thought lucy asked some good questions, and got tori talking about many different things. playboy mommy and the "bad times", george bush- "junior" and the link between politics and her song "angels", graham norton (how he compares to U.S. talk show hosts!) and so much more (i'm sure there are other people who remember the detail better than i do). at times she had everybody laughing, and at other times, in tears. the songs were amazing, and it changed my opinion of certain songs (angels and seaside) hearing them live. "take to the sky" and "jackies strength" are always two of my favourate songs to hear live, and last night they sounded better than ever! there were 2 camera's there filming, so hopefully we'll be seeing it again soon.

after the show a small group of us waited around the back, and at 11.30pm tori came out and signed everyones CDs, posters etc. she had a quick chat and hugs with some people and left after about 8 minutes.

although it was short, in my opinion, last night definitely showed tori at her best.

From Selina:

Just thought I'd let you know that it seems someone didn't have the right info about Tori's performance last night - the press releases on the web specifically said that no tickets would be available before the event and the only way to get tickets was to queue when the box office opened. It specifically said to please not contact the theatre before hand as they would not sell any tickets - so this is what me and a friend did!

We got to the theatre at about 9h30 and were about 250th in the queue - we had wanted to get there earlier but traffic from Bristol had not permitted it. We didn't mind queueing at all, but at about 11h30 some guys came out of the theatre and said that there were only about 200 tickets for sale that morning, as the other 200 had already been sold before the day!!!!! This meant that only about the first 1/3 of the queue would have been lucky enough to get tickets as it was 2 max allocated to each person. There must have been some way, therefore to get hold of tickets before the box office opened, but as it was advertised that there was no way of obtaining tickets beforehand, somebody had the wrong info, which led to a lot of people being disappointed.

Shame it wasn't to be yesterday - but lesson learnt - will have to camp outside the night before next time!!! Glad (and jealous!) to see that those who did get tickets enjoyed her performance.

From Richard Galbraith:

THE MAIN EVENT - Tori Amos - A musically punctuated conversation moderated by Lucy O'Brien

Lucy started off the show by giving us a background of her relationship with Tori. She said that she first met Tori in 1996 and interviewed her for a British TV programme, and got spend time with Tori over a weekend at her home, discussing Pele and new work in progress). She loves the fact that Tori is so down to earth. She then welcomed Tori to the stage. They sat at a little round coffee table in two small sofas near the front of the stage at the right hand side, Tori in the farthest right seat. I was rather happy about that, since my seat was a bit to the right in the 4th row. The venue overall though was so small. I compare it to a small cinema auditorium. Tori was wearing a black chiffon outfit, with a flowy black chiffon skirt, and a grey type bodice.

Lucy started the conversation by asking first of all about the new album, and the concept. Tori told her that everyone over the years always handed her mix CDs of her work, and husband told her to keep them. She started going on about multi track tapes, the original tapes from LE, UTP, BFP etc, and that they spent a long time trying to figure out what should be on the album. Some tracks just didn't sound right for the album, and others, when they listened to them again sounded completely different from when they were originally born.

Lucy commented that one of those that stands out was Playboy Mommy. Tori said that a lot of the people here tonight were aware of the painful circumstances that the song came from. She gave a small story about where the song came from: A journalist came to Tori's house to interview her, and noticed that she had a bandage on her upper arm, and made the comment 'have you been doing drugs again'. Tori quite startled by this said 'no - I've just miscarried'. She said this with a very shaky voice. She went on to tell us that a lot of Mothers and children came to visit her at that time, and one little girl stuck out in her mind. The girl said something like - 'I'm going to find another mummy now just like your little girl did'. (Tori's chats sometimes get confusing, but it was something along these lines).

Lucy moved on from her songs for the moment, and made the comment that Tori now lived in cornwall, and asked her what she liked about cornwall. Someone from the audience shouted 'surfers', and Tori said, 'oh yes, I like surfers', although I'm a faithful wife, I only look. She then went on to give some really strange Tori story to prove that Cornwall was interesting. She told us about this man who was walking around Bude. and this woman ran over him, then reversed over him again. The woman was arrested, but strangely the man was up and walking within 2 days again..... and that was the end of the story....

Tori was then asked what she thought about another certain 'US dignatory' visiting London this week - 'Ah yes', said Tori, 'Junior'. This was an obvious lead in to discussion of the song Angels. Angels is about the recent political environment in the states, and honesty within the system (or lack of). Tori said that she was surprised that so many US citizens 'bought into' the war threat. There was far too much manipulation for Tori's liking, and 2 years ago when the voting was happening for 'Junior' she was in Florida, and voted for someone else. Tori commented on the fans, and that alot of her fans have the same out look and views on life as she does herself, and she likes to be honest with them in her songs. Angels is a very good example of that, and Lucy rhetorically asked/commented to Tori that she wasn't afraid to stand up and give the truth.

Lucy wrapped up that part of the conversation, then read from the set list to us that Tori was now going to sing, and do Angels, Jackies Strength, and Winter. Tori's voice was very strong, and I think the break has given her time to rest. Angels was such a beautiful song live, and solo, as everything was done tonight.

After the three songs, which Tori got a large applause for at the end, Lucy O'Brien came back to the stage for some more interviewing.

Lucy asked Tori where her songs come from. Tori went into a big discussion about how her songs are like the biggest crossword puzzles, and sometimes parts come to her bit by bit. One of those songs was Amber Waves. Tori commented that she never knew what kind of machine the character had for years, and it was none of her business, then it just came to her... She did a couple of lines acapello of Amber waves at this point. Tori then laughed and said maybe its because she thinks her songs are like a big crossword that none of them make sense. Lucy asked about motivation for her songs. Tori answered by saying that she gets her motivation from other artistic mediums, such as paintings, literary, and occasionally other music, but not as often other music, since if you here a piece often enough, you'll end up plagerising from it.

I can't remember the link, but suddenly Tori was talking about following the route of Vlad the Impaler around Romania, Turkey, and various places throughout europe. They had a guide with them, but on one of the days suddenly Tori started uncontrollably bleeding. Tori said that it didn't look like she'd be seeing much more Vlad, and the guide commented that it seems that she already had, and had been impaled!!! (weird story).

The interview concluded the conversation by asking about new material that will be coming out. Tori mentioned the book that she and Ann powers are writing. Tori said that Ann powers had seriously lightened up since she'd left the New York Times.

There were a few more small items discussed, but I can't really remember what since they were so unconnected at times. One commented that Tori made was 'I'm an assonance girl', I unfortunately can't remember what that came from:-( There was another comment, I think about the song 'Honey', which was supposed to be on Under The Pink It didn't appear on it, since at the time one of her '2nd producers' told her that she didn't like that song. Tori said that she wished Honey had been on that album, and that the producer was a 'bad bad producer' and she made a smacking action with her hand.

Tori took to the piano again and played Silent All These Years, Take To The Sky (with Carole King Interlude), Seaside, Pretty Good Year and Cooling. All the songs were beautfully played.

Read a review of this event from The Guardian newspaper in London.