Lilith Fair '99 Gets Canadian Kick Off
Women's music fest begins its third and final year in Vancouver
A lot has changed since the first
Lilith Fair tour three years ago.
Teenage girls are in charge of the
world's economy, the Rev. Jerry
Falwell has condemned the annual
music festival, and the word "Lilith"
has become synonymous with a
kind of kitty-pettin',
aromatherapy-sniffin',
Birkenstock-wearin' idea of
femininity.
Any one of these changes might be enough to
inspire organizers to put the kibosh on the yearly
tour. But at a press conference just prior to the start
of this latest forty-date tour, founder Sarah
McLachlan insisted that, by ending it this year, she
is simply sticking by an earlier manifesto.
Judging from the first day of the tour at Vancouver's
Thunderbird Stadium on July 8, McLachlan may be
right to pull the plug. Any good Lilith was going to
accomplish -- i.e., proving there is a large audience
for music from female musicians -- has been done;
to continue is to risk self-parody, more accusations
of greed, Letterman punchlines and -- heaven forbid
-- a Weird Al Yankovic song.
This didn't seem to be the case at first, when
Luscious Jackson took to the main stage in late
afternoon under a cloudless sky. The band's funky
urban pop tweaked the already happy, sunny vibe of
rain-weary Vancouverites, who were as smilingly
dazed as if this was the sun's first appearance since
Labor Day. The New York band's swirling
keyboards, funk-for-every-occasion guitar and
trashcan-bashing drums were like inner city graffiti
come to free-flowing, brilliantly-hued life.
In all fairness, Mya -- who has all of one album and
a duet with Pras to her credit -- didn't have a chance
following performing/recording vets Luscious
Jackson. But the eighteen-year-old nevertheless
gave an energetically cheesy show, complete with a
Pras-less "Ghetto Superstar," backup singers and
professional dancers, snippets of old Jackson 5
tunes, a mid-set tap dance, audience members
dancing onstage -- in short, everything but the soul.
Canadian singer Deborah Cox rattled a few fillings
with her powerful, glass-shattering voice. Cox
benefited from a smooth backing band and much
stronger material than Mya, but the white-clad (tank
top and vinyl pants) performer was also undeniably
all about the benjamins, singing shamelessly
radio-friendly R&B and boasting about how her
gospel-tinged single "Nobody's Supposed to Be
Here" had spent a record amount of time at the top
of the charts.
It was up to Sheryl Crow to get the festival back on
its legs. When deciding to take this gig, she must
have realized someone was going to have to bring
the noise, and it might as well be her. With this in
mind, she and her five-piece band knocked out
furious versions of jagged little pills like "Anything
But Down," "If It Makes You Happy" and "Am I
Getting Through (Part I & II)." A Hammond-fueled
"Every Day Is a Winding Road" and the whimsical
"A Change" provided some lighter moments, while
her unnecessary, string-sweetened cover of Guns n'
Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine" prompted many of the
16,000 attendees to add their voices to the
anthem-turned-soundtrack fodder.
The sun was disappearing behind the stage when
McLachlan strode forth. She was greeted by
delighted shrieks from the teenage fans crowding
the stage who moments before had been chanting
her name with near-religious awe. What followed
was an intermittently pretty, dreamy and ultimately
sleep-inducing set of tracks from Fumbling Towards
Ecstasy and her most recent studio album, the
three-year-old Surfacing. McLachlan appeared
confident and happy to be onstage after a
nine-month absence, but the lack of new material --
along with the seams of the old -- is starting to
become painfully obvious. Of course, try telling this
to the young women singing along with every song
or tearfully embracing during the unabashedly
sentimental "I Will Remember You."
The set ended with a solo piano version of the
popular ballad "Angel." As with previous Lilith Fair
tours, McLachlan then left the stage only to return a
few minutes later with several other mainstage
singers who sang along on the vintage gospel pop
ditty "Put a Little Love in Your Heart." The pleasant,
up-with-people number seemed about as inspired as
McLachlan's set and Mya's bubblegum R&B, and
perfectly epitomized this year's Lilith Fair: fitfully
enjoyable, smugly self-satisfied and running out of
ideas.
SHAWN CONNER
(July 9, 1999)
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