oh alanis, we love you

When I was thirteen I had a bad attitude, a wardrobe that consisted of flannel shirts and baggy jeans and general expression of distaste for life plastered on my face around 99% percent of the time.

I like to think that I’ve moved on from this; both in my approach to life and my choice of wardrobe (although as I sit here in my baggy jeans and t-shirt, I have to stop and wonder).

But when I was thirteen I also had an absolute love of Alanis Morissette that probably would border on obsession.

There was something about Jagged Little Pill that brought everyone together, the different groups within the social structure you create at thirteen all could relate to some or all of the songs that made up that famous album. (As I looked up the album on Wikipedia to provide the link, I also discovered that the album spent 12 non-consectutive weeks at the top of the US charts and is one of only three albums to ever remain in the top ten for a year. Considering that the other two albums are Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Celine Dion’s Falling Into You I don’t know whether to class this as an achievement or not).

I can look back and believe that some of my love of the album came from the fact that it was a little racy, especially considering the type of music that I had been exposed to prior to Jagged Little Pill. My parents loved such a wide variety of music, from old-school rock like Skyhooks to my mum’s like (we say unhealthy affair) of the Top Gun soundtrack. Alanis swore in the album (my mother actually broke her calm when I came home from buying it at Target and she saw the Warning: Contains Swearing on the front cover), she sang about things I didn’t really understand at the time and the grunge-style rock music that I hadn’t really been exposed to before really appealed to my classical music brain.

Last night Dave and I went to see Alanis in concert at Brixton Academy. It did make me laugh that after meeting Dave in Clapham for a drink, we then decided to catch the tube to Brixton, which as we were sitting between Stockwell and Brixton waiting for the train in front to leave the platform at Brixton, it occurred to the both of us that neither of us had been to this venue in the past and that we had no idea where it was.

Thankfully, London (or in this case Brixton) is signposted quite well, so we managed to follow the signs and the crowds of people down to the Academy where the big sign read “Alanis Morissette tonight”.

Dave was introduced to dodgy chicken for dinner, so it was a learning experience all around and it wasn’t until we were standing waiting for our bags to be checked that we realised that there was a Nandos directly opposite the theatre.

I hadn’t heard any of her new album Flavors of Entanglement but after hearing a few last night I’m hooked and ready to get my hands on the CD. The older stuff that she sang like Uninvited, You Oughta Know, Hand over Feet and Eight Easy Steps just made the crowd go wide and the most memorable moment for me was the last encore when the introduction for Ironic started and she stuck the microphone out over the audience and we all sang the first verse in a beautiful chorus. It was pretty amazing.

She sang for about two hours in total and it went by in a flash. I will admit that I loved her old stuff a little bit better than the new, I suppose to a large degree because of my attachment as a kid and that belief that she understood how I was feeling at that stage of my life.

And now I’m even more excited about Glastonbury, as I’m enjoying the live music scene terribly.