If I had listened to my friend and went to El Mocambo at 7:30pm, I would have been farther up in line and maybe would have scored a seat at the front of the stage. But that didn’t matter last night as I watched Lisa Loeb work her magic on the stage of El Mocambo, that barely stretches the width of the already narrow club.
I stood in line from 7:50pm, doors opened promptly at 8:00pm. I went in and grabbed a Stella as I knew it would be a long night ahead of me. The opening act, a local from Toronto who is typically called upon by the club owner when they are in need of an opening act, actually did a fairly good job getting the crowd ready. His comedic songs and stories about his plaid, polyester suit catching fire during his grade 9 dance amused the crowd sufficiently.
It wasn’t until 10pm when Lisa Loeb actually graced the stage. It was well worth the wait as she started her intimate concert with a track from Tails. The evening progressed quite impressively as she sang some new songs from her latest album, the way it really is. In between songs, she would talk to the audience, telling us stories about how she loved peanut butter flavoured treats, pumpkin pie, frozen pumpkin pie, how she never heard of Crispy Crunch, and how her latest album was originally called half and half since it was half pop songs and half acoustic songs.
While Nine Stories was not there, it was just Lisa, her acoustic guitar, and Matt (?) with his electric guitar, which made for a perfect accompaniment. Lisa conversing with the audience, doing impromptu songs as her stories ran her wild, and even singing an audience member happy birthday, I felt that Lisa’s on-stage presence was one to remember. Lisa’s voice, which is ever so gentle, often gets buried with the sound of the guitars and percussion but since this evening was solely guitars, her voice carried through the dense cloud so purely. I really like her voice on CD, but hearing her live made me like her even moreso as I realized how talented an artist she really is… how short of an artist she really is, and how cute of an artist she really is! 
She had her trademark glasses on as well.
Although she has a number of albums out to date and I only really know Tails, I recognized a lot of the songs, which means she must like that one album. Asking the audience whether we wanted to hear new or old songs, she immediately answered, “old songs” as she said, “who would want to listen to new songs anyway?” It suited me just fine as I had never heard any of her songs from her latest album.
You can tell that Lisa is very well accustomed to being on-stage as she knew exactly how to interact with the audience between songs. Proving to us she knew how to speak Japanese, one audience member yelled out, “hai” (meaning “yes”) when Lisa said, “nihonjin desuka?” (meaning “are you Japanese?”). No, that audience member was not myself… but I did meet her after the concert!
After taking requests from the audience, and even off her forum on the Internet, she sang the theme song to her TV show, Dweezil and Lisa, a cooking show on Food Network in the U.S. After the concert, she was gracious enough to sign autographs, take pictures with eagerly waiting fans, and answered any questions that we may have had.
This was one of the better concerts that I have gone to in a long time and I really appreciated the fact that she was so interactive with the audience members. Not many people go through the trouble of doing this. I brought along my CD of the single Stay, which I had her sign, and had my picture taken with her as well. Those will be up sometime later, whenever I get the chance. Overall, I am very glad I went to this concert, especially at a low price of only $12.
