Concert Review: Maceo Parker & Ani DiFranco

Date
17 June 1999
Location
FleetCenter, Boston, MA, USA
See the ticket of the concert.
Note
This review was written 10 months after the concert. Apologies for the errors and the things I don't remember.
Read other reviews at the Ani DiFranco Tour Information site.
Read my other concert reviews.

Maceo Parker and Ani DiFranco went on tour together; the tour was called the F-Word Tour. They were also touring with a female-DJ whose name I forgot.

Maceo Parker

The support act was performed by Maceo Parker and his band. The only thing I know about Maceo Parker was that he had played with James Brown. Moreover, I didn't know funk at all.

My impressions were that they are very good musicians. The music is really cool. However, I found the lyrics poor. In one song, there must have been something like 5 different words. Moreoever, Maceo Parker's son does some rap-stuff, and I don't like rap music.

So it was a good support act, but I wouldn't go to a concert to see only Maceo Parker.

Ani DiFranco

The FleetCenter is a huge venue, comparable to Bercy in Paris or the Wembley Arena in London. I don't like large venues, because you can't see very weel, and there is no real exchange between the artist and the audience.

I therefore liked this concert less that the ones in London a few months earlier. The Shepherd's Bush Empire is a small theatre. I was a few metters away from the stage. At the FleetCenter, I was something like 50 metters away, not centered. Moreover, everybody was screaming too much to really be able to enjoy completely the show. That's a shame that some fans ruin a concert like that.

Anyway, Ani DiFranco's performance was good. I liked it a lot when she performed new songs (Providence, To The Teeth, etc) because people didn't know the lyrics and I could hear her sing louder that my neighbors...

Julie Wolf was playing with a blue wig, at some point Maceo Parker played on a song that I unfortunately don't remember, and a guy named Brian Wolf (if I remember correctly) played the trumpet on two songs.

Ani was pretty talkative during the concert.

So it was a pretty good concert, that could have been better with a better (possibly smaller) audience.

And now the set list:


Hugo Haas (hugo@larve.net).
$Date: 2000-10-28 08:44:45 -0700 (Sat, 28 Oct 2000) $