I just finished watching the Tori Amos DVD, Welcome to Sunny Florida. Overall, it was excellent. I am reminded again what a virtuoso she is.

While the band is fun, I still maintain that Tori is at her most potent in emotional impact when armed only with a piano. So I was delighted to find that a fairly large section of the show consisted of exactly that. Just tory and the Bosendorfer. Her ability is nothing short of magical.

I have to admit that even though I consider myself a fan, I find a significant portion of Tori's work incomprehensible lyrically. Are the words evocative? Yes. Understandable? Frequently not. Ot least not easily. There are songs of hers that have ranked among my favorites for years, in which I have no idea what she is talking about.

As I listened to the brilliant rendition of Clound on My Tongue tonight, I realized that she could have been singing in Klingon, and it wouldn't have mattered. I would still be enthralled.

Another high point. Take to the Sky. I was so glad to hear a fresh performance of that old favorite. It was a B-side on a maxi single. I used to play it all the time, through some very rough spots in my life. It is a song whose words I can totally connect to. The way she weaved in a pseudo-improv up tempo version of Mohammad My Friend at the end was sheer brilliance.

One disappointment. Why. The. Fuck. Was Tori's voice muted out during parts of Professional Widow? This is not breadcast television. This is DVD. Last time I checked, FCC idiocy has no juristiction here. So what's going on? Did Pat Robertson's goons suddenly invade Sony Music?

I would have a hard time believing that Tori herself would saction the bleeping out of her own words in a product marketed directly to her fans. Therefore, I must assume that some higher up bozo in a stuffed suit at Sony made the call. (Apparently, they didn't catch the memo that (1) The year is not 1955, and (2) these same words were uttered unbleeped on an album 8 years ago that didn't even bear one of those silly Parental Advisory logos.)

Here's the funny part. During the last line of the song, even though Tori's mike was silenced, you could still hear what she was saying. She was belting it out out so lound that it was being picked up by other stage mikes? The only real effect of the muting was to destroy the musical continuity.

Not only did this strange meddling with the mixer destroy the flow of the song. It also broke my mood of reverie during the music that followed. When I pay money for a Tori concert disc, I expect that every microsecond of every utterance out of her beautiful mouth will be there. I am pissed that some fundie idiot at her record company would try to cheat me out of that. Thus it was that when I heard something with a familiar sentiment, I got back into it.

In the interview section, Tori talks about what her job is. She does not come up with it all on her own. Rather, she is merely receiving and interpreting messages from beings in other dimensions. She puts these otherworldly ideas into a form that the rest of us are able to receive.

If this is so, then it wouldn't be much of a leap to call her a priestess. (At this point, I shall refrain from reciting Tori's Prayer, but I will link to it.)

[June 8: Doh. The website that used to host it has now disappeared, even from the google cache and wayback machine. Therefore, I shall reproduce it again here after all.]

Our Tori
Who art in my cd player
Hollowed by thy voice
Thy new release come
My car shall fly across Earth as if it were from Heaven
Give us this day more college radio
And forgive those who program mainstream radio
As we forgive those who blast us with Country "music"
And lead us not into egotism, but deliver us into bitchiness
For thine is the voice and the attitude that we shall worship forever
Amen

[Now back to what little is left of your regularly scheduled rambling.]

Now, I really must get to bed. I imagine that this, yet another pen and paper rambling, will reach the content vulture community eventually. After I get the rest of them transcribed out of the queue. To that end, I am off to dreamland so I can be awake tomorrow.