I still think this Aimee Mann lyric should be:

Got out of Phoenix
Just in time
A box of Kleenex
For the rhyme

…instead of the real words, which finish with “for the ride.” #

In the past, when we’ve gone to the Anaheim House of Blues, we’ve tried to eat at Downtown Disney. It always proves problematical, with restaurants either not taking reservations for parties of two or not having any reservations left. This time we just ate near home and drove up after dinner. We got there after the doors opened, but before most of the audience arrived, and managed to claim a spot dead center in the main floor, much closer than we’d ever been to this stage.

The opening act was Rebecca Pigeon. She was quite good, and a good match stylistically. (Too often, you only get one — or neither. We still joke about “Corn Mo” who opened for TMBG a few years ago.) She started with “Tough on Crime,” which Katie figures has to have a Heroes video in it somewhere. Interesting fact: it turns out she’s married to David Mamet.

By the end of the opening act, the house had filled up considerably, and was respectably packed by the time Aimee Mann took the stage. This was actually the third time we’d seen her in concert, and the second time we’d seen her here. This felt a lot more like the last time in terms of audience interaction, what with her taking requests and making jokes. She actually opened with “Freeway,” which was kind of a surprise since it’s not exactly complimentary toward Orange County.

She told a funny story about how “Borrowing Time” started out when she was approached to do a song for Shrek III. At first she thought, “Oh, you must know me from my songs for Magnolia!” So she and her writing partner (whose name escapes me) watched the scene, found a song in it, brought it to the producers, and they kept trying to make it faster, more upbeat, etc. By the third draft she was starting to hate the song. As it turned out, they’d asked a whole bunch of artists to write songs for the same scene, so she didn’t feel too bad about dropping it. They wanted a happy, encouraging, “Come on, you can do it!” song, and she remarked that she’s not very good at that kind of message. (Yeah, I know, understatement of the year.) So they picked up the original version of the song, threw out the lyrics, and went with the sort of creepy seven-dwarves sound.

She finished the main set by opening to requests. Someone kept shouting “Stupid Thing,” which I don’t really know (I started listening to her with Magnolia and Bachelor No.2, and I’ve only picked up I’m With Stupid of her older albums), but she didn’t play it. Finally she said something like, “Tell you what. We’ll do one more song, then I’ll go offstage and pretend I’m not coming back. I’ll have a drink or water and you’ll cheer. Then I’ll come back on and play ‘Invisible Ink.’” After the next song, she announced she was going away “and never coming back, ever again.” A minute later, she came back and did another two or three songs.

In the end the concert was about half songs from @#%&*! Smilers and half older songs. Aside from “Freeway” and “Borrowing Time,” off the top of my head I remember “Phoenix,” “Thirty One Today” (which should be played right after the Gin Blossoms’ “Twenty-Nine” for a birthday disillusionment duo), “Medicine Wheel” and possibly “Great Beyond” from the new album and “Goodbye Caroline,” “Invisible Ink,” “You’re With Stupid, Now,” “Red Vines,” “Save Me,” “Wise Up” and “One” from the back catalog.

The concert was great, and very different from the last concert we saw at Royce Hall just by virtue of having a full band behind her (Tori Amos performed solo last time we were there). It was also very different from the last time we saw Aimee Mann, at the House of Blues last summer. For one thing, she was focusing on songs from her new album, The Forgotten Arm.

It was also much more interactive than either of the other two concerts. What stuck in my mind was the request section. She had everything set up so that people would write the request on a piece of paper and leave it on the stage, but when she got to the break, people were shouting out titles. One guy came prepared with what looked like a balsa glider and wrote his request on that, adding that it was his birthday. I don’t remember his request, but she improvised “Happy birthday to the paper airplane man.” I’ve seen singers who get talkative, and singers who improv silly songs, but it really felt like the house was much smaller than 1800 people. (Of course, you could still make a drinking game out of the number of times she says “Thank you so much” after a song.)

Another funny moment was when someone shouted out a request for “Voices Carry.” “Voices Carry?” she said. “Why not ask for a Cyndi Lauper song? ‘Time after time…’” Surprisingly, after performing “King of the Jailhouse” for an encore, she finished up with none other than “Voices Carry,” altered to fit her current style.

The one thing I didn’t like about the concert was that the amplification was up way too loud. The couple sitting next to us left partway through because the woman kept covering her ears.

Of possible interest to my brother: the bio in the program was credited as labeled as “Courtesy of Wikipedia.”

The concert let out at 10:00, which was just as well, since the drive back was…interesting. Since we’d had to eat early to make it up to LA by 7:00 (and we just barely made it—the opening act had started singing), our plan was to grab a snack in Westwood and eat on the way back. We were surprised to find that there were lots of place open at 10pm on a Sunday, but I got frustrated trying to figure out which parking lots were fair game. We just got on the freeway, figuring on stopping in Manhattan Beach for a McDonald’s we knew of next to the freeway. The rain came back as we drove south, and then we started seeing lightning. When we stopped for food, we just parked the car facing southeast and watched the light show. There was a fantastic lightning bolt that snaked sideways across half the sky in front of us. The rain got pretty heavy for the rest of the drive, but for some reason it cleared up again by the time we got home.