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Pop: hot ticket
By GINA VIVINETTO, Times Pop Music Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published November 7, 2002
Travels with Scarlet
Tori Amos is a chanteuse with chutzpah. The inventive Amos has the critics drooling over Scarlet's Walk, her new concept album detailing a trek across America by Scarlet, a fictitious protagonist. Scarlet's Walk deals directly, and in metaphor, with the terror of Sept. 11 and its aftermath in songs such as I Can't See New York. Other tunes find Scarlet journeying through Virginia and Las Vegas in the singer's signature quirky style.
Fans adore Grammy-nominated Amos for her bold and brash ivory tickling. Amos's voice, too, is a wonder, capable of piercing swells and hushed, intimate cooing. Always ambitious, always provocative -- her last studio album was a collection of reinterpretations of angry male-centric songs written by tough guys such as Eminem and the heavy metal band Slayer -- Amos is also one of our finest live performers.
Tori Amos performs with Howie Day at 7:30 tonight at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $32.50-$42.50. Call (813) 229-7827 or toll-free 1-800-955-1045, or go to www.tbpac.org.
Punk and pop in St. Petersburg
The kids are screaming for the punk-pop double bill of Saves the Day and Ash, above. From New Jersey, Saves the Day continues to make suburban punks happy with its buoyant, energetic and good-natured tunes as found on last year's Stay What You Are.
Ash's buzz continues to grow. The Irish trio got its start with teenage chums Tim Wheeler and Mark Hamilton in a heavy metal band. The band soon after went the Brit pop route and were charting in the U.K. while they were still in high school. Guitarist Charlotte Hatherly came onboard, and the three found a sound filled with sharp guitar, big hooks and more vitriol.
Saves the Day and Ash, along with Kind of Like Spitting and Curkle and Square, perform at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Jannus Landing, 16 Second St. N, St. Petersburg. $15. (727) 896-2276.
The Blind Boys of Alabama to perform
The Blind Boys of Alabama are an institution. For more than 60 years, they have been singing their trademark soul and gospel. It all began back in 1939 at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind, when founding members Clarence Fountain, Jimmy Carter and George Scott combined beautiful falsettos and gorgeous harmonies to make music that sounds splendid even to the secular.
It's not all slow and easy; no, the Blind Boys kick it up many notches with foot-stomping spirituals and rollicking hoedowns.
They also tinker with standard pop, appearing on Up, Peter Gabriel's new album, and giving spiritual treatments to well-known songs by Prince, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder. Name any other musical act that has the savvy to mesh Funkadelic's Me and My Folks with the 23rd Psalm. Or to sing Amazing Grace to the tune of House of the Rising Sun.
The Blind Boys of Alabama appear with Jon Cleary, the Absolute Monster Gentlemen and Eddie Kirkland and the Energy Band at 8 p.m. Saturday, Skipper's Smokehouse, 910 Skipper Road, Tampa. $20. (813) 977-6474.
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