Last night’s Beth Orton show.

A couple photos via Flikr are (here)(here)

This was part of the Prospect Park Celebrate Brooklyn $3 summer concert series.  The show featured an enthusiastic singer, enthusiastic crowd, cheap tix, and open air well matched to the music style.  Although I started non-committally , merely laying aside my bike to listen from across the road, I was lured in stages, first moving to lie beneath the pines in the cheater bleachers (where noone pays and the view is actually clearer than the lawn).  After a couple songs of this, I paid, went inside and moved seat by seat to eventually the seventh row seats.  Going alone makes it easy to come late and still sit close.

Every song was radically unplugged and re-sung.  Even when Beth Orton got to a standard like “Stolen Car” my recognition dawned only gradually. 

Coming from me, a casual fan, I think we all felt an I-got-my-money’s-worth sensation, what with the intimate between song patter, the special song renditions, and the frequent switching of instruments . 

The constant aw shucks patter between songs inspired a lot of sympathy.  When she talks it's as if it's just you and a few friends sitting across from each other playing a game of cards.  She noted that she is a small hall performer and was a little awed that anyone would think she could please a SRO amphitheater.  “How are you people back there in the trees!  I feel I’m not satisfying you.” .  Out of the blue, she told an unrehearsed joke that she didn’t set up right so the punchline didn’t make sense.  This mistold joke, plus all the talk about being a mom well-cemented the bond between her and the fans.

The crowd was less female than I expected, although, to a man, the guys were all in tow of at least a woman if not a baby pram.  In the entire sold out crowd, I saw no example of a guy there with other guys.  It is apparently a losing proposition to convince a buddy to “meet me at the Beth Orton show”. 

The crowd’s style was surprisingly uncrunchy.  This was a white wine Prospect Park demographic.  Conspicuously absent, given the venue: Under-30s and African-Americans.