Now this is cool: Image Comics will be releasing a graphic novel anthology with stories based on Tori Amos songs next summer! And Colleen Doran is illustrating one of the stories! (Her blog is where I heard about it.)
We went to Tori’s concert on Saturday at the Grove of Anaheim. The standing-room show was good, though there were some snafus getting to it, made worse by the fact that they opened the doors about 45 minutes late. So late, in fact, that they gave up on security checks and just started letting people in. By the time it started moving, the line snaked all the way along the side of the theater and down at least one side of the (rather spacious) parking lot.
Her current album, American Doll Posse, is based around a fictional quintet of singer/songwriters, each based on a different facet of her personality, and she performed as three different personas: Pip, Santa (no relation), and Tori. Which should have been more fun, but there was just a bit too much self-parody in the performance.
She brought a band again, which I think helps keep her from the slow-everything-down tendency she showed on the Originial Sinsuality tour (Katie calls it “elf disease,” after the way the elves of Lothlorien speak in the Lord of the Rings movies). Except for an endless vamp at the end of “Waitress,” this concert moved much more than the last two we’d seen.
It was good to hear stuff from Choirgirl Hotel again. It’s been notably missing from the last few concerts we’ve been to. And there was a surprising amount of stuff from her first two albums as well. (Full set list at Undented.)
I’ve seen Tori in concert 6 times: Once in 1999 at Irvine Meadows, when she toured on a double bill with Alanis Morissette, twice on the Scarlet’s Walk tour from 2002-2003 (Universal Amphitheater & the Pond), twice on the Original Sinsuality tour in 2005 (Royce Hall & the Greek), and this show at the Grove. My favorite was the Scarlet’s Walk tour. I reviewed the Universal show during the first few months of this blog, though I don’t seem to have written anything about the one at the Pond.
Update: The Beat has more on the comic project, including a title, Comic Book Tattoo and additional contributors.
Funnily enough, that afternoon the Grove was where Tori and I had the ‘project status meeting’, and where the wife and I took the kids to the show that night. Thanks for the blurb on the anthology… it’s turning out to be a lovely monster. 🙂
-R
(The kids loved the show as well, natch)
Ah, so it’s your fault they let us in late! (Just kidding!) 😀 About 15-20 minutes after the doors were supposed to open, someone from the group behind us in line went up and asked about it. They were told something like she’d been playing songs for special people.
Anyway, we were in the third(?) tier back, near house left, right behind some really tall guy — hazards of standing room crowds, I suppose.
I’m definitely looking forward to the book!
No, the songs being played prior to the show were for something else, which I know about but can’t say… it’ll become clear in about 6-9 months why the show opened late.
The kids were quite miffed at having to wait in the cold for so long (all four of them are under 10 after all) and if I could have gotten everyone in on time, believe me, I WOULD have LOL.
we (my wife, myself and the four daughters) were in the roped off area towards the middle left.
The book is coming together nicely, if you like comics, (or Tori) I think you’ll really enjoy it.
I think we may have seen you. We were one row behind the rope, and at one point saw a family walking past with several kids. Weird!
One thing that impressed me about the wait was that even though it was cold (by local standards) and late, everyone in our part of the line seemed to take it in stride. Even the group that went up to ask was more concerned with knowing what was going on than, say, demanding to be let in. People were frustrated, but no one seemed to be angry.
[…] Tattoo, the upcoming ~500-page anthology of comic book stories inspired by Tori Amos’ music announced last December, and Comic Book Resources has a huge article about the project, including […]