9/14/03 - Perth, Australia, Rosemount Hotel

9/14/03 - Perth, Australia, Rosemount Hotel

Incomplete setlist:

I Dont Blame You
Wolf Among Wolves
Try Me - These Arms Of Mine - I've Been Loving You Too Long - Fuck The Pain Away Medley

This was the 8th performance of the Australian tour. Women & Children opened. Again, Chan had her band with her.

Fan Review

Rosemount Hotel is a medium size venue about 500. Nice place with a good vibe. She kicked the band out less than half way in (not planned) and did the rest of the show solo. The band hung out outside the club. On my way to catch the Red Eye to Sydney (had to leave before the show ended) we all hung out for about a half an hour, while Chan played. They were a lot of fun.

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Matador Forum Member Reviews

Though Cat Power had the quality to produce fine artistry, as was demonstrated early and late in the show, her constant self-indulgent self-pity became much too pretentious in my mind.... Though at first her manic southern drawled rambling turned me on and made her seem like an innocent cute shy being, in the end I came to know Chan as a whiny spoilt bitch. We left thoroughly disappointed as I didnt pay money to see a tribute to Dadaism, I payed money to see an artist who is acclaimed as a talented songwriter to play her songs. At the same time I dont dig gigs where the artist does not say anything, however when all that is being said is in the same tune as 'help me my valium prescription cannot be filled', I cannot dig that. So what was good about this gig? Firstly Women and Children, Secondly the playing of Johnny Cash's album American Music before Cat Power and thirdly Chan's cover songs... What was not cool was the forty dollars forked out... Sure whomever it was defending Chan on the Sydney threads may say we didn't get the artistic merit of the show, well to that I say I dont really give a fuck. I came to see music, and music is what I wanted, I came to see a professional artist and I saw a sad sorrowful state of a girl on the edge of nervous breakdown/suicide...or did I?? Was it all just an act...Whatever, The perth public where misled before hand in believing we were seeing a Cat Power show...what we really saw was the Chan Marshall comedy hour.

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I was at the Rosemount show right at the front sitting down, as Chan asked, and it was the best show I'd ever seen. I'm even considering going down to margerat river on wednesday. Chan, you took two of my cigarettes last nite, but I took your whole packet on saturday.

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(At the) Rosemount gig she was much more relaxed, so it was a much more flowing show. Loved all the covers she played. Anyone remember what they where? The last couple of song she just threw it all out there, and her voice ahh I just wanted to wrap it around me like a shawl. Band were excellent once again. Thought Women and Children were brilliant too. First time seeing them, very Velvety, but that’s not a bad thing. Looking forward to buying their stuff and exploring a bit more.

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I was at Rosemount gig too and it was great. I left early because I wasn't feeling too great and I walked passed the drummer, guitarist and violin girl. The drummer said I was cute and asked where I was going, but I pretended not to hear, then after I walked around the corner, out of their sight, I wondered why I was so dumb! I could have been hanging out with Cat Power's touring band. And that guitarist is very nice. But regardless, I had a fantastic time and Im sorry to hear about everyone being so dissapointed by the freo show.

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Comment

Incredible. I know people left the show early all upset like, but I was captivated by her every move. It was sooo surreal, usually performers try and get the audience into shows, but last night the audience was trying to keep Chan Marshall going, cheering her every move, yelling out words of encouragement. Twas mindblowing.

She told some lame jokes on sunday, but they were soo good, because she was in a good mood. I think since she came onstage at 9, Chan wasn't that drunk, which in turn helped her play. They did an amazing version of "I Dont Blame You", the violinist was fascinating through it (was it the same blonde chick there in the Melbourne shows?).

Some Cat Power moments:

"I wish it were the sixties" *crowd cheers* "I wish it were the two-thousand and sixties"

"Who's funnier, me or Gweneth Paltrow?"

"Did you hear the one about the Australian who all they said was no?" *shrieking laughter*

"See I grew up on a tobacco farm....." (15 minute story)

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Concert Review

Beautiful. Terrible. Psychotic. Marvellous. Painful. Amazing. I have never seen a per­former quite like Chan Marshall. A Cat Power gig is some­thing to behold, and not some­thing to forget…

First the sup­port band last night, who were rather beau­ti­ful. No, not Andrew Ryan. He was fine and dandy, but Women & Children, an osten­si­bly French band of multi­na­tional ori­gin, who it appears even Soulseek has heard noth­ing of. Chamber–Low. Stunning voice, reminded me a lit­tle of Nico. Truly quite haunt­ing, at least from the van­tage of the Rosemount floor. Not hav­ing any bucks on me at the show, the CD is on its way from InSound. Clever googling (not the eas­i­est band name to search for) even­tu­ally led to their label site and this is what they sound like. I think the closet goth in me could be happy with this new find. All the cool kids will have been into them for for­ever by this time next year.

Not hav­ing seen Cat Power live before, I was pre­pared for a ter­ri­ble expe­ri­ence. Chan Marshall’s chron­i­cally bad stage pres­ence is the stuff of lo-fi leg­end, and last night was no excep­tion. The Rosemount floor is not the most acco­mo­dat­ing place at the best of times, but when you are forced to sit on it by a woman who looks in dan­ger of vacat­ing the stage if you dis­obey, well, you just gotta cross those legs tight. At least it frees me of gan­gly tall per­son guilt.

She kicked her band off the stage after a few songs, streamed snot and hacked up phlegm from a lung infec­tion, almost tore her own hands apart singing solo, and dragged a dwin­dling crowd along on a schiz­o­phrenic but mes­meris­ing jour­ney. A base­ball cap, brought in with the good inten­tion of keep­ing her hair out of her face, was taken on and off some­times up to three times dur­ing a song, and her hair went through phases of being up, down, pony tailed, braided. A light shin­ing too brightly where she sat was dealt with by stand­ing on a stool (half way through a song) and turn­ing its glare away.

But some­where in there, amidst the mania and mum­bled anec­dotes about tobacco plan­ta­tions, there was that voice. You knew it would always shine through. She didn’t really fin­ish many of her own songs, and of course I didn’t hear the ones I wanted to, like Say, but she has always been more com­fort­able with her cov­ers. I guess they pro­vide a good cloak. Most beau­ti­ful of all was a slightly reworked ver­sion of Will Oldham’s Wolf Among Wolves, my most favourite track from Master and Everyone.

And was that Peaches she fin­ished up with? Did she really segue from Otis Redding to Peaches (fuck the pain away) or was that some crazy vision I had? That’s some kind of crazy insane genius if she did, but per­haps if I imag­ined it, I’m the insane genius. Fairly sure I’m not.

A night, for so many rea­sons, that will hold strongly in my soul. It would have been easy to hate, if I was watch­ing from a slightly dif­fer­ent angle, or if the light was shin­ing in my eyes that lit­tle bit dif­fer­ently. And many peo­ple did. It wasn’t a show, it was occa­sion­ally tor­tur­ous, but it was a per­for­mance. And as much as she wouldn’t want you to think so, Chan Marshall is a con­sum­mate per­former. The fact that I have never been moti­vated to write a decent gig review here before, not even for that glo­ri­ous Mountain Goats gig a month or two back, must mean something.