When I told my friend that we at the newspaper had received Ani Difranco’s new live CD, “Carnegie Hall 4.6.02” for review, some pseudo-math equation is what she tells me as a reply, “Five then seven, then six or eight.”
So I asked her to elaborate.
Instead, she smiled graciously and let me grasp what she was talking about in my own time. What she was talking about were, of course, track numbers, her favorites to be exact.
Originally, I intended to listen to the CD in the order that she had suggested. However, since I have had only the tiniest of exposure to Ani Difranco, I decided to go about it the old-fashioned way.
So, I slide the disc in, and my first impression is that Ani is a very underrated guitar player. The way she picks and strums her chords is simply ferocious. She exaggerates all the staple strengths of the acoustic guitar, while at the same time making the pitch and tone dance around her rapid poetry-jam lyric style.
But, however impressive this shirking of volume control is, it also happens to be my main complaint of the CD. I’ve already explained that I have very little experience listening to Ani Difranco.
What I did not admit is that the small amount I’ve listened to Ani is completely out of proportion with the enormous amount of Ani Difranco jokes I’ve told.
Ani is pretty much my fallback scapegoat I use to heckle any girl whenever she wants to change the CD at a party.
Well, with the help of this CD, karma bit my self-consciousness right in the face.
I tried to keep Ani at a safe volume (I had forgotten my headphones) on the computer, so that I could hear only her.
Then Ani would whisper low, and just as I had turned the volume up to hear what she was playing, she would blast me in the face with an angry lyric about being sexually abused by some guy in London.
Ani and I tangoed back and forth like this for the entire CD, which is actually pretty good. Am I an Ani fan now, though? I doubt it.
Despite how great of a guitarist she is, and despite her incredibly personal lyrics, her music continues to have way too much in common with one of my sister’s dresses; it doesn’t fit me right and makes me feel kind of uncomfortable.
As for my friend and her assessment, she was right. Track five has that amazing guitar work that so enamored me, while seven displays both Ani’s storytelling ability and her connection with the audience.
I would listen to track eight directly after seven, since it is a continuation of her story.
Track six is the only track she chose that I disagreed with. If I were to pick, I would go with track one because it kind of reminds me of some old Bruce Springsteen, and Bruce Springsteen is the Boss.