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[Please note that when this review was written on 5 September 1994, a former
email address was given. Please disregard the address <ecto@home.net>. My
current email address is Send me an Email]

From: Joel Siegfried <ecto@cox.net>
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 03:40:31 -0700
Subject: Road Trip Musings - 7 Concerts


This has been the most incredible time for me. Just two short weeks of
following Tori Amos around the West Coast, but memories to last a lifetime.

So, what were the highlights? With one concert to go in Seattle on the 14th,
I have managed to meet Tori 5 times, always outside the stage door, in a
dark alley, with somebody's elbow sticking against my back, and usually
jostled by other adoring fans. In fact, the only times that I didn't get
to talk with her has been after the UC Irvine concert when she was not
feeling up to stuff and just went straight to her limo, but did wave and
smile from the open window, and after the San Jose concert when I was under
the weather (and under threat of banishment from my hostess). The times we
did meet were in Las Vegas (just a handshake, hello, and see you in San
Diego tomorrow), San Diego (flaming cupcakes with wind-tunnel resistant
candle inside the theater at the first encore; birthday card, along with
message to call my friend Ilka in Germany at the Torifest next week
outside the theater AND a big embrace -- she is SO tiny and fragile), Los
Angeles (I handed her a copy of Harville Hendrix's book "Getting The Love
You Want", with a card inside, murmured sweet nothings as she leaned over
and pecked me on the cheek -- she doesn't seem to wear any perfume or have
any scent at all, very mysterious), San Francisco # 1, (she was very
pressed for time, but her security person steered her directly over to
me, where I handed her a children's book about faeries that my friend
had priority mailed to me, and tried to have our photo taken
together, but my marvelously, expensive Pentax auto-focus would not fire
because we were just too blasted close to the camera, and there was no
place to back-up to), and San Francisco # 2, when Tori came over to me,
either seeing or sensing that I had been crying during her singing of
China, something she had not sung in over two months, because she had
written it for Eric Rosse, they had separated (as she said in San Diego),
and she couldn't get through it without stopping, and had vowed never to
sing it again on this tour; she asked ME if I were OK! Can you believe
that? As I thanked her for an incredible performance, AND for all the
shows that I had seen her perform, she took my hand in both of hers,
squeezed it, and said "ooogh". I'm sure I was levitating. Actually, I
felt higher than a kite, and just as light. I told her I would see her in
Seattle, we tried again to get a photo taken, same dismal results. I
got a ride back to Moraga (no one knows where it is) from Barry, a graduate
Electrical Engineering student at Berkeley who was amazed to learn that I
was joel@cox.com ("I've read your posts and really like them!"); we
chatted about the wonderful, incredible second SF concert, about
really deep thoughts, such as the exponential growth of technological
advances in the last century, and the no-growth, no-progress in human
evolution during the same period of time, and pondered the "whys". We got
lost, literally. But he got me home safely.

It has been an amazing time. Tori is an incredible performer,
subject to the same pains and disappointments that all of us feel. But to
listen to her, even on a bad day, is a wonderful treat, and to hear her
perform at an exceptional moment, is nothing short of a transcendental
experience. I have never cried at a pop concert, until that moment, and
can't say really that I understand what was going on, but it was really
something wonderful. The adventures in Vegas, hiking back to the strip on
a full-moon night from the UNLV campus, the cake-walk in San Diego, the
Juan Fazio/Sterling Moss buzz up the freeway in 2-hours flat
door-to-door, followed by a jaunt down Hollywood boulevard, shopping for
used cds, looking at the names on the stars in the pavement, ending up at
the Mann's Chinese Theater, and getting tickets to see Pat and Vanna
doing Wheel of Fortune, was almost a surreal experience -- they did look
so plastic in person; the 110 degrees inside Crawford Hall at UC Irvine,
packed into a basketball gymnasium with 5,000 sweaty little bodies and a
17 year-old woman-child named Heather as my date, no ice for the
soft-drinks only of course; narrowly avoiding being arrested by the
over-zealous UCI campus police woman, who insisted on shining her f*****g
flashlight in my eyes even as I was walking away from the limo site, as I
was ordered to do for no apparent reason; the ticket fiasco in
San Jose (we had row 21 orchestra seats and encountered a lad selling
second row tickets for a piddling $20 each, less than face value, so I
grabbed them, not realizing that no one would even be willing to take my
back row tickets for free); the incredible San Francisco experience,
topped off by surprises -- talking to the woman on the bus back from the
Exploratorium who had seen Tori perform in Vienna where she was a
Fullbright Fellow; having Drambuie after Drambuie in Armani's Emporium,
while plied with smoked salmon, Promiscutto-wrapped melon balls, jumbo
shrimps, little cheese doo-dads, and oysters which were all left-overs
from a private party, as I tried to stay sober with intermittent cups of
expresso, talking with Kimberly on my right (she sold wedding ensembles) and
the Dennenbergs on my left (they sold Picassos) before stumbling
off to the first SF concert. All of it was magical. Was it really
happening to me? You bet your life, it was...

More later, I hope.

Joel
ecto@home.net

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| Joel Siegfried      San Diego, California - USA     Voice (619) 222-9236 |
| Internet addresses: ecto@home.net                                        |
| "But I haven't seen Barbados so I must get out of this."   -   Tori Amos |
| "It's easy when you're blessed with money, love and sex." - Heather Nova |
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