As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Indigo Girls / Shirlette Ammons at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts (Annapolis), 4/19/2014


Finding the Maryland Hall (the old Annapolis High School) was a lot easier with the sun still out (as opposed to my fall trip to see Richard Thompson a few years back). We arrived around 7:15, just in time to get one of the last parking spaces in the main lot right next to the building. There was at least one other lot, and a couple of folks directing traffic. Given that the show was a sellout, getting out after it was over was unexpectedly painless – everyone was polite, and it didn’t take too long to get out of the lot and then back onto MD 450. We weren’t all that close to the front (Row Q, seats 2 and 4, on the aisle in the right-hand section), but nevertheless had a good view. (Not surprisingly, the sound was not as good as at Strathmore, where we had seen them a couple years back.)

Amy and Emily were great and the crowd was enthusiastic, although when the girls played “Power of Two” by request, the response to Emily’s invitation to sing along was pretty tepid. They started with “Become You” and ended the main set with “Galileo”, stopping along the way on favorites such as “Fill It Up Again”, “Wood Song”, “Get Out the Map”, and “Shame on You” (which got much of the crowd onto its feet), along with the less-frequently-heard “Love’s Recovery”. Amy also did “Broken Record” from her recent solo album Goodnight Tender. “Closer to Fine”, of course, closed out the show.

Somewhat oddly, there were more people going in and out during the show than I’m accustomed to at any indoor concert, much less one by the Indigo Girls. Louise speculated that it might have been related to the small “bar” in the hallway that was selling wine.

The evening also featured a short opening set by “Durham poet, songwriter, bassist, rapper and singer” Shirlette Ammons, who stuck to rapping for this engagement, featuring a number of tracks from her album Twilight for Gladys Bentley. The background music was decent  but somewhat generic bass-heavy hip-hop. The lyrics may have been great, but these (aging) ears were only able to pick out the occasional word and phrase.

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