the indigo girls put on a fantastic show last night in san luis obispo. by far the best i've seen in over two years. i am so glad that i sucked it up and went. i'd be kicking myself had i missed that one. highlights: faye tucker, salty south, true romantic (still not a fan of the lyrics, but sold sold sold on it live), deconstruction, fugitive, and more.

setlist is not within reachable distance, and i am quite lazy at the moment. i will post that eventually. no photos (except for a crappy iphone upload to my facebook) - my camera was in kentucky at a black crowes show.

i'm actually excited for the rest of the indigo girls shows this summer. really really really excited.

hey y'all,

i'm packing to move soon (more of that forthcoming very soon if you are on my friends list. it's a good move...). i have been collecting indigo girls memorabilia since the late 80s. i'm really trying to get rid of stuff for this move. anyway, i discovered that i have duplicates of many indigo girls memorabilia items. instead of selling everything individually, i listed a few memorabilia "lots" on ebay. considering i paid $15-20 for some individual items in these lots, i am selling this stuff at quite a discount.

i don't want to get rid of my collection, but since these are duplicates, i can justify it. i realized i had duplicates of so so so much, sometimes 3+ copies of random items.

anyway, if you are an indigo girls fan (or an amy ray solo fan too, duh) check out my ebay auctions.

i'm not a janky autograph/memorabilia dealer (in fact, i am not selling anything that was signed because most of my signed memorabilia was personalized to me). i'm a true fan and i want my duplicates to go to other true indigo girls fans. :)

uh, the entire indigo girls catalog (both released and unreleased songs).
same goes for all of amy ray's solo songs.

there are more (black crowes, grateful dead, U2, the coup, etc), but IG and aray solo are the only artists whose entire catalog i know by heart and can quote without thinking.

hell, i know "shame on you" better than amy herself. ;)

the camera police was out in full force last night!

so my berkeley photos kind of suck. sorry!

i uploaded a few.

it was a MUCH bettter show! here is the setlist:

love of our lives
sugar tongue
fill it up again
yield
power of two
(michelle malone, who was playing across the bay in san francisco, played "tighten up the springs")
ghost of the gang
what are you like
ozilline
everything in its own time
driver education
digging for your dream
get out the map (yes, two emily songs in a row)
shame on you (amy fuck*ed up the first verse for the third time in a row)
prince of darkness
second time around
fleet of hope
FUGITIVE (!!!!)
watershed
romeo & juliet
i'll change
kid fears (surprisingly, NOT with matt morris. i LOVE when the audience sings the echo and that happened last night!)
closer to fine (w/ matt morris)

(encore)
heartache for everyone (w/ matt morris)
galileo

i seriously didn't write down the sacramento setlist, i was so disappointed after that show. but i am sure joey and i can remember it (with some help). i'll try to get it posted.

i am a MUCH happier indigo girls fan today. berkeley was AWESOME!

i took a bunch of photos last night in sacramento, but only uploaded a few. enjoy!

the indigo girls will be featured on this week's live from the archives show on KFOG. it airs wednesday and sunday at 8pm west coast time.

also on this week's live from the archives are sets from the dead and the allaman brothers band.

now on to a personal plea: KFOG streams online. can anyone record it? not only do i love the indigo girls (duh), but i am seeing the dead on sunday (super stoked) and i really like the allmans too. PLUS i have a feeling they are going to rebroadcast parts of the IG private show that i was at a few months ago. my computer can no longer record streams AND i won't be able to listen live at either time. please? someone...

thanks in advance!

the indigo girls were featured on a celebrity playlist podcast. it is only available in the us itunes store, and is slightly hard to find. i uploaded it for anyone who might want it.

download link.

enjoy!

I have a single ticket in Row D of the orchestra (seating chart: http://www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/presents/ticket_office/images/maps_seating/detail/Zell_A.gif ) for the Indigo Girls at Zellerbach in Berkeley on May 13.

I ordered this ticket from the Indigo Girls own presale, not KFOG's. It will be a hard ticket, however the ticketing outlet that IG uses sends out their tickets about 10 days before the date of show. I am more than happy to send you a receipt from MusicToday, and will send the hard ticket when it arrives in the mail.

$50 is what I paid and that is what I'm asking. This is a single seat, and it's better than anything I could pull on KFOG's presale this morning (row K was the best I could do).

This should be a great show! Poseidon and the Bitter Bug is a solid album, and take it from me, the songs sound so awesome live! Don't miss Amy and Emily in Berkeley next month!

reply here if you want it, and we will be in touch.

edit: sold! YAY!

seeing this as the lead story on cnn.com's entertainment section made me smile.



the article is just a transcript from the indigo girls' appearance yesterday on cnn.com/live, but here is the article for those of you who missed it. ( cut for those of you who could care less. )

personally, i like the headline "dumped musical duo goes own way" better...

and yes, the indigo girls will be on cnn.com/live in less than five minutes!

happy indigo girls poseidon and the bitter bug CD release day to all!



i posted my review a few days ago, if anyone missed it.

as a long-term indigo girls fan, i like to allow their new albums to "settle" before i post any sort of public review. it's too easy to simply hope that their new work sounds like their golden days (1990-1995, in my opinion). and it's too easy to write off an album because i do not harbor the same feelings that i harbored for nomads*indians*saints on its release date (i was 13 when n*i*s was released, and was just a young and naive fan girl who believed everything about the indigo girls was "awesome." as i grew older, i became much more of a critic). and, my first impressions are not always the ones that resonate. that said, poseidon and the bitter bug already had an unfair disadvantage: once the novelty and the initiation period wore off, i think that the indigo girls two most recent albums, despite our differences and all that we let in are the weakest of the indigo girls catalog. AND, i am not a big fan as mitchell froom as a producer. so that all tainted my opinion of poseidon and the bitter bug, and i didn't want to review it too soon.

i've had the album (regular and acoustic version) for almost two months now. and since release day is less than a week away, i am ready to go public with my thoughts. ;)

in fairness to amy and emily, it's a good thing that i waited so long to write anything. my initial reaction to poseidon was, "this is the end of the indigo girls' career." i found it to be trite, over-produced, and musically immature. but then i saw the girls live at a private concert. and they played a bunch of songs from poseidon. and then, a few nights later, i got high (the best way to listen to music, in my opinion), and sat down with a musically minded friend and analyzed the album from start to finish. gradually, in my mind, poseidon went from one of emily's weakest efforts to one of emily's strongest efforts. and for the first time ever, my favorite track on an album is an emily song, not an amy song. poseidon is truly an emily saliers masterpiece. and i am so glad, because despite our differences, all that we let in, and even (somewhat) become you were weak for emily. amy shines too, but amy has consistently, and even more so recently, been the creative genius of the indigo girls. so the fact that this album is such an emily masterpiece is almost a bit surprising. of course, it's a mixed bag. it's not a perfect album, or even one of their greatest albums. there are a few tracks that irk me (nowhere as a bad as "last tears" or "free in you" from their two most recent albums). but some of the songs are standouts.

my favorite track on the album is emily's "love of our lives." at first listen, i laughed and scoffed at it. cheesy love songs are not my forte. i like politically charged tunes the best. but "love of our lives" is not a cheesy, "lite rock" love song like "power of two" or "free in you." it is politically charged ("we've been wanting to be held by binding ties, we've been fighting for the love of pour lives"); it could be a catchy jingle for the "no on 8" campaign. and it's synical. and it sums up the lesbian dating cycle so well ("broken pieces, broken hearts, fix me, oil me, match me with the next best thing"). aside from the lyrics, the song has some badass harmonies. they are different than expected, and perhaps even boring at first listen. but having amy sing everything one octive below emily (except for one distinctive part) sounds pretty damn amazing.

other highlights are the radio single "what are you like" (emily), the insightful "fleet of hope" (emily; again, listen to the harmonies), the dark political "sugar tongue" (amy) and my favorite amy track on the album, the prom-esq "ghost of the gang."

amy and emily took risks on this album that longtime indigo girls fans will either love or hate. for example, emily claims that "digging for your dream" is r&b inspired. it's interesting, that's for sure. and for the first time for the indigo girls, amy converted one of her solo songs into an indigo girls song. i find the re-arrangement of "driver education" to be a bit tragic. i am a huge fan of amy's solo work, and think that song is better off as a solo song. while amy tried something a bit different, "true romantic" irks me. the lyrics are not amy's best, and i'm not a big fan of what she is trying to do with her voice. the weakest track on the album is emily's "i'll change." it feels very "lite rock" and cliche.

allison brown appears on banjo on a few tracks, namely amy's "second time around" and "salty south." "second time around" showcases amy's gift-given ability to write a politically charged story that isn't too simple or too obvious.

all in all, poseidon and the bitter bug is an album with quite a few masterpieces, and a dud or two. but i think that once it's a permanent (not new) part of the indigo girls collection, it will outshine its two predecessors. this is also the girls' first independently released album since strange fire. be sure to listen to both CDs, the studio one and the acoustic one, for better or worse, the production on the studio album gives some of the songs a completely different feel.

personally, i don't see the similarities between poseidon and the bitter bug and strange fire, but that is me...

Indigo Girls' R&B dreams
By Christopher Toh, | Posted: 16 March 2009 1240 hrs

SINGAPORE : Listening to the Indigo Girls’ latest album, "Poseidon and the Bitter Bug", you’re immediately struck by how similar it feels to their debut album "Strange Fire" (1987).

It’s almost like coming full circle, said Emily Saliers - who, together with Amy Ray, makes up the Indigo Girls - because this album is the first they’re releasing independently, on their own label IG Recordings, ever since "Strange Fire".

The two-disc album has band tracks on one disc and acoustic performances on the other, which was done in part to satisfy fans who wanted to hear both sides of the Girls.

And you’ll also get to hear their new album in full acoustic mode when the Girls perform at the Esplanade on Monday as part of the Mosaic Music Festival.

But, says Saliers over the phone from San Francisco, where they were about to start their promotional tour, if you’re a fan of their older stuff, they’ll be playing that, too. “I think we should honour that. We have a whole arsenal of instruments like mandolin, banjo, harmonica and classical guitar, so we try to mix that up. It’s a very organic show.”

Together Forever

Despite working together for 30 years (“and we’ve known each other since I was nine!”), the Girls haven’t gotten tired of each other. “If you’re in a good partnership like Amy and I are and have good management, it’s all going to work. Having done it for so long — and still loving it - is a good thing. You trust the process, each other and the music. It’s going to be good,” said the 45-year-old.

But that doesn’t mean they’re not still learning new things about each other. “I was doing an interview earlier this week and the journalist was asking me about a song that Amy wrote called "Second Time Around", about whether she wrote that about us and our experiences, and I was saying, ‘No, I’m quite sure that she doesn’t write about us’.

“And he said: ‘That’s funny, because Amy said she did’. And I asked her and she said ‘yes’. And I was like, after all these years, I had no clue!”

A key part of being the group is being independent of each other: Ray has released three indie solo records, while Saliers has her own restaurant and wrote a book with her dad ("A Song to Sing, A Life to Live"). “We do these separate projects that keep us satisfied as individuals, so when we come back together as the Indigo Girls, it’s very nice.”

R&B DREAMS

Saliers says her guilty pleasures include American football, red wine and rap music. “I love rap music. Old-school rap like Public Enemy. I love this new artiste called K’Naan. I’m very influenced by rap and R&B. On the latest record, er, there’s no rap, but there’s a song called "Digging for Your Dreams" - it’s very R&B-influenced.”

But no, they’re not going to put out a rap album just yet. “We’re not that foolish to think that just because you admire something, you’re able to do it.”

What they have done, however, remains close to their hearts, particularly their work with activist groups, including their own, Honor The Earth. “Very early on we started organising benefits for different causes and I don’t think we’d be anything else other than be activists. We’ve found a way to marry our music to that. It’s much more gratifying to put your music to good use. It’s part of our identity, even if it’s not perceived that way, it’s something that we all want to do for a long time.”

Right now though, it’s all about the new album. And no, they’re not worried about how big it’ll be. “I think there’s a lot more pressure like that on a band like U2 than us! I just laugh. I don’t know how many records we’re going to sell or how many tickets we can sell. I just know that after all these years, to be still excited about new songs, I really can’t ask for more at this point. I’m quite satisfied with where we are. And we get to come to Singapore, what can you ask for really?”

The Indigo Girls perform Monday night at the Esplanade Concert Hall, 7.30pm. Tickets from S$58 available at Sistic outlets. - TODAY/ar

source

for those of you who don't know, the indigo girls played their first show in asia (in singapore) yesterday. here is an interview from a gay asian (from hong kong) online magazine. there are some misspellings and editing mistakes, but it's still a fresher interview than most american news sources churn out.

( looong, so behind a cut )

the indigo girls are playing this year's california worldfest. worldfest is one of northern california's many low-key, hippie festivals. it's located near grass valley, in the sierra foothills.

this is what i have been screaming about for the past few years. i am thrilled! i fully support this. this ain't your cruise ship, corporate festival, membership venue, completely-for-profit-benefiting-some-monopolizing-conglomerate gig. this is independent and non-commercial. since they are such advocates of non-commercialism (and now that they are on their own record label, nothing corporate), this is the kind of gig that i am so glad to see the indigo girls playing. they are walking the walk for real on this one.

i, for one, will be there with bells (and tie dye) on.

on tuesday night i attended a special indigo girls private show in the KFOG playspace (here in san francisco). joey went with me, and it was kind of a random mid-february treat for us. anyone who has ever been to the the KFOG playspace knows that it is very small - i believe the capacity is about 30. the girls did a quick swing through the west coast (san francisco, seattle, and portland) to promote poseidon and the bitter bug, due out on 24 march. (side note: i have heard the entire album and i am far from impressed, but after hearing a few of the songs live, i got a tiny glimmer of hope).

this is not the first indigo girls private show i had attended, so i kind of knew what to expect: very low key, short set, and very few instruments (amy: one guitar, a mandolin, and a harmonica; emily: two guitars).

KFOG did not allow any photos, recordings, or cell phones because any additional electronics could interfere with their recording. i respected that, and turned everything off. bummer about the no-photos because joey and i were in the front row, and my photos would have been sweet.

here is the setlist:

sugar tongue
love of our lives
second time around
what are you like
what are you like (take two)
galileo

again, short and sweet. during amy's "tuning time" the audience (mostly not seasoned IG fans, just lucky radio winners) asked a few questions. nothing new, nothing that most IG fans don't already know.

it was a fun night, and although i'm not going to do much traveling to see the girls for this album, it did excite me for their return to the bay area to play a real show (hopefully in may or the summer).

tonight i'm going to the KFOG indigo girls private show in the KFOG studios. given my past experiences at these, tonight should be super fun. i will take photos if i can (last time KFOG did not allow photos despite IG's no-flash policy), and will, at the very least, post the setlist tomorrow.

i'm not that into the new album at all, and while i don't think that my "since 1989 love of amy and emily" will ever completely disappear, i do go through stages. right now i am at an indigo low. i'm not really going to go out of my way (ie travel far) to see them. and i am not going to ever try to double the number of times i've seen them (over 200) or go for a new yearly record of number of times i have seen them (33 times in a year is my record) but this is super awesome. an intimate set in downtown san francisco. how could i possibly turn that down?!?

hopefully KFOG won't lose or screw up their recording like they did last time.