How do you compete with “Sticky & Sweet” a few miles down the road?
Pretty well, as a matter of fact. The six women who rolled into Denver for the November 11 stop of The Hotel Cafe Tour might have been considered the “cheap date” alternative to the all-powerful Lady Madonna, whose tour arrived the same night at the sold-out Pepsi Center.
After all, tickets at the Bluebird, a onetime porn theater located next to an adult bookstore on Colfax Avenue’s seedy east side, were only $18. That compared favorably with The Material Girl’s outrageous prices that went as high as $350.
If Rachael Yamagata, Meiko, Lenka, Kate Havnevik, Emily Wells and Thao Nguyen seemed threatened by the fact that the Hard Candy Icon was nearby, they either didn’t know it or show it. Unless most of them dressed in black for a reason.
These girls had to put on their own high-energy, fast-paced production. And with the help of emcee/house band leader/comedian/guitarist Jason Kanakis, they moved like a precision drill team once the show got started.
So they were 20 minutes late. By the time Madonna hit her stage 90 minutes after the scheduled 8 o’clock start, the Bluebird’s respectable gathering of a couple hundred (many of whom didn’t want or couldn’t afford a Madge badge), had gotten their money’s worth.
In the first hour alone, they heard 12 songs; saw all six Hotel Cafe Ladies perform either solo, with the house band, or with each other; listened to a few corny jokes; and took part in a group stretch during a short intermission.
It might have been a little disjointed, but talk about a frenetic pace:
• 8:20: Havnevik opens with “Travel In Time” and seems like a cross between Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson, using prerecorded music and backing vocals to full effect while mesmerizing the audience with her exotic look and those long black gloves.
• 8:30: Meiko arrives with her acoustic guitar, performs a pair of her fan-friendly top-of-the-pop offerings, “Season to Love You” and “Under My Bed,” then exits.
• 8:39: Emily Wells, with her violin and tattooed-covered arms, tells the reserved crowd “to feel free to shake your asses,” before launching into “Symphony 6: Fair Thee Well & The Requiem Mix,” then quickly runs offstage to grab a string of Christmas lights that she wraps around her.
• 8:50: Lenka, joining this tour for the final week, sits as the piano and sighs, “Oh, my goodness. I’m the ‘fresh meat.’ Be gentle, people ... be gentle.” The Australian “newbie,” who is promoting her self-title debut CD, specializes in sugary pop confections. Opening with “Trouble Is A Friend,” she then goes to the mini-keyboard (decorated with two hearts on the front) for “Don’t Let Me Fall,” which she describes as a “half-lullabye, half-love song.” Afterward, she praises the band for learning her material “on the day” she arrived.
• 8:58: Yamagata (shown at right during a show earlier in the month) receives the biggest ovation thus far, and seems genuinely touched by the first significant sign of fan adoration, a small bouquet of flowers that she places on the piano. She then slows it down to sing “Elephants,” from her excellent new double disc CD, Elephants ... Teeth Sinking Into Heart, before bringing back the house band and utilizing Meiko and Nguyen as backup singers on “Be Be Your Love.”
• 9:08: Nguyen admires what she has just witnessed: “Rachael Yamagata, oh-my-Godda” draws major laughs, and she appreciates it saying, “It’s a dumb-ass joke I like to use all the time.” Nguyen appears to be the renegade of the bunch, wearing a light green dress and cowboy boots amid the sea of black and designer pumps, and ready to shake things up with her mighty electric guitar in hand. After sampling a beverage, she says, “I want to see some friends out here that don’t come in a cup.”
Article comments
1 - carmen
I really enjoyed this one (critique and concert). Much more entertaining than the Material Girl, and I came away NOT wanting my money back.