Stageit online performance and live chat April 14 2012

[Michele]

Homecoming
My Medea (no looper)
Anna Rose ->
The Atheist Christmas Carol (harmonizer for the ending, into) ->
Feather Moon (with harmonizer and looping)
Hope on Fire (with PorchBoard Bass and harmonizer)
Mission Street (on guitar)
Shasta ->
Green Island Serenade ->
Harbor (with harmonizer and looper, I think)

Equipment rundown

[chigaijin]

Oh, I wish I had been able to make this show. I was on an airplane at the time. Fingers crossed for a more friendly schedule on 5/12!

[Fred]

I thought that this one was a pretty large technical advance over previous. No audible distortion, and the lighting was much better. Some folks complained about audio levels, but I suspect that low levels are the price of avoiding clipping in louder passages. There was a LOT of dynamic range, and I suppose that could have been compressed to avoid distortion, but I'd prefer to keep things this way. With enough gain at home, there was no problem getting plenty of sound even out of the internal speakers on my iMac. (Needed to use full volume on the StageIt player, and about 3/4 volume on the system.)

The performances were great. I thought the time Vienna spent on Feather Moon to work out the looper parts *also* resulted in a superior vocal and piano performance to any I had heard before. And of course Mission Street on guitar was to die for.

These retrospectives are very useful as a way of listening to Vienna's music with fresh ears. As someone who joined the party after DTTN was out, and who quickly latched on to DTTN as a favorite, I had always kind of given WS short shrift in Vienna's catalog, and this performance finally put it in its proper perspective for me. I'd have to do the stats, but I'll bet the average frequency of WS songs in Vienna's shows is very high compared to others. I am only now appreciating how adding these songs to the earlier ones must have enriched her live shows at the time. A contemporary VT show would be unimaginable without them.

[Ferrard Carson]

Warm Strangers was my introductory album, way back when in 2004, and from that point on, Vienna's music has played a central role in my life. So you could say this album has a special place in my heart, and the concert certainly did it justice. Production value of this StageIt concert was much higher - stunning sound, evident as early as the power-chords of "My Medea," and the video, while still choppy, was bright enough to see her well this time. It's a pity StageIt is so parsimonious with performance time. I'd love to see full hour-long shows or more so that we could get an even more relaxed experience and hear more stories.

More news to come later tonight, probably. Depends on how fast my dorm room internet decides to be.

EDIT (2350 hours): Links to the videos are up in the Recording section.

~ Ferrard

[Fred]

I also saw a bit of choppiness in the video, but it beat the heck out of the pixelized, low-res, shot-from-a-mile-away-with-a-wide-angle-lens video from Concert Window at the Freight and Salvage shows, which was practically useless. For me, seeing the performer's facial expressions and body language during performance is a crucial addition to the music, and the StageIt video was more than adequate for that. It was good enough to say that I have seen at least one live show that was visually inferior to it owing to seat location. So not bad at all.

[micro]

Don't know if it's the setup at the F&S but not all Concert Windows shows are like that in terms of video quality. Unfortunately it looked like the video feed was highly compressed. Audio was ok so you can argue that the most important aspect was preserved.

[CrazyOne]

It has passed now after a few more weeks, but I was SO frustrated that night when I realized I walked out the door a little while before the show started. It did not reenter my mind until later when Vienna posted a Facebook update. Damn. But I have my ticket for this Saturday and I don't think we'll forget this time. Moral: don't buy the ticket a month in advance because I'll forget.