Hole at First Avenue
Rock fans may claim to admire spontaneity, but they sure get frazzled fast when Courtney Love calls their bluff. Despite a series of well-received performances, a reported "trainwreck" of a show at the 9:30 Club in D.C. on June 27 has threatened to become the defining moment of the recent Hole tour. As the band had yet to take the First Avenue stage at 12:45 Saturday morning, about an hour later than expected, more than a few audience members must have dreaded a similar fiasco. Instead, Love delivered a solid rock show cut with a healthy dollop of chaos and banter.
Yeah, Courtney Love can talk. Reminiscing about her three-year, late-'80s stint as a Minneapolitan, she discussed her Twin Cities alter ego ("Cricket Nordstrom" from Edina) who "matriculated," as she put it, "from the I.V. League," and scanned the crowd for former sex partners. Whether stating that "the most wealthy town in America" could spring for some T-shirts from the merch table, or comparing credit scores with the audience, she reminded us just how charming she can be in her gabby, easily distractible way.
But her asides and monologues never undercut the music, from an opening medley of "Pretty On The Inside" (written, she claimed, "six blocks away") and "Sympathy For The Devil" through the acoustic closer "Never Go Hungry Again." The high points from the new Nobody's Daughter—"Skinny Little Bitch," "Samantha," and the lovely "Pacific Coast Highway"—were set off by oldies like the quintessential scream-along "Violet" and the high-gloss power pop of "Celebrity Skin." And her rasp proved a flexible instrument on down-tempo covers of Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" and Leonard Cohen's "Take This Longing," which she introduced by calling for an overdue moratorium on Cohen's "Hallelujah."
But it was another cover song that defined the night. After she and guitarist Micko Larkin stumbled gamely through The Replacements' "Unsatisfied," Love dismissed their attempt as "the worst performance of that song ever" and apologized for her sideman's mistakes. (Though it's hardly his fault that she flubbed the words, right?) But no apologies were necessary—what could be truer to the spirit of the Mats than such free-spirited imperfection?
