1 post tagged “colleagues”
It's been a bit of a rough week this week, leaving me a little tired. Right now I'm trying to keep my eyes open, while I'm supposed to be digging through some software configs. I've been a little fluey the last couple of days. Not sick enough to be sick, but just annoying enough to be annoying.
Yesterday I had a dinnerparty with my colleagues. We went over to this place called Bazaar, which serves Moroccon style food. What I never expected possible in my previous job, happened just now. It was interesting to find out the person behind the colleague. I've always kept work and personal life firmly apart, because, well, the people in my previous job weren't really people I'd normally spend a lot of time with. We ended up in a pub and I spent most of my night talking to a colleague about the goth culture, roleplaying and going to festivals. Oh, and some technobabble too, but it's hard to avoid, I suppose.
Last night I went to see Joan As Police Woman at Paradiso. Last time she played there, it was in the little upstairs room. It didn't sell out this time, but I'm sure it was close. I went in straight from work, and had some really nice sushi beforehand at Moshi Moshi. Apparently well known at the Paradiso too, because Joan's bassplayer and sound engineer were there too. Duh.
The gig started off a little rocky. Paradiso can be really, really noisy, especially around the bar. Joan has a strong, powerful voice, but her songs are soft, more voice than instruments, which means the talkers at the bar become disturbing. Add the plastic unbreakable glasses Paradiso uses and you can imagine what it sounded like. Joan joked about it sounding like she was playing at a wedding.
However, her songs became so quiet, so full of raw emotion and power that while the set went on, even the most die hard smoker, drinker, talker and screamer shut up. I even stopped taking pictures, as my (relatively quiet) shutter just sounded disturbing to me. Stupidly enough, the only sound coming from the audience was the beep-beeping of people taking pictures with their camera phones. Very strange and mildly disturbing.
There's a lot of things to be said about Joan. She's a striking presence, often dressed a little over the top in sparkling dresses or (in this case) MC Hammer like jumpsuits. She's an attractive woman and I am sure her choice of dress or materials that offer a hint of see throughess captures the imagination of many a bloke there and possibly a couple of girls. Then there's her behaviour on stage. She's joking around, sometimes throwing in little anecdotes that only make sense to her and then bursting out laughing in a little party of her own, only to launch into the next dead serious song.
The audience loved her and just got won over more and more. The applause before the encore was spontaneous and kept going well after what's considered polite, only to be repeated in full force after she had finished her set.
For a moment she seemed to bask in the afterglow of her performance, while the audience virtually carried her on their hands, only to then finally disappear. Not for long though, because even in the 1000 headed Paradiso, Joan is kind enough to pop into the merchandise stand to sign anything people ask her to.
It's amazing how Joan Wasser has grown, from being one of the backing band for numerous people to a somewhat fragile support set for Rufus Wainwright, onto the 300 head room in Paradiso, and the 30 people FNAC in store in Paris I was at last year. And then finally this powerful performance in a well filled venue all of her own. Just excellent and quite a feat in her genre.
