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Sinead Live in St. Paul (OR) USA, August 10th 1997, Champoeg Park

By Carcky@aol.com (ERIN)

This concert was a open air concert, in a state park about 30 miles from Portland, Oregon-and the location made all the difference in the world. In front of a much smaller crowd, sinead was much more at ease and talkative than she was in downtown Seattle, the previous evening. The Screaming Orphans were all a little bit sunburned, and mentioned that they were sweating to death and not used to the sun, being from Ireland. The crowd laughed because it rains in our part of Oregon about 9 months out of the year. I noticed that one of the sisters was wearing the same shirt as the night before, and my husband pointed out that the sister who played the keyboard looked like she might be suffering some sort of painful intestinal disorder, from the expression on her face. It is safe to say that, genetically, the sisters covered the whole spectrum in degrees of attractiveness. From very pretty to -well- kinda ugly. As long as I'm being ruthless, they were all pretty rythymically impaired, as evidenced by their teetering zombie moves (Well, it's not their fault, they're white and most of us have little or no soul). The drummer was by far the best dancer.

As for our darling sinead, something in her dancing reminded of Danzig-justly or not. During "John I Love..."she had the habit, both nights, of weaving her microphone in the air next to her, so that the cord spilled onto and over itself, coiling in graced patterns like an impossibly charmed snake. She made comments before and after most of her songs-much of them drowned out by the small but faithful audience. She dedicated "I Am Stretched..." "to all of the dead people out there," before "...Rebel Song" she said, "this is a teeny bit of a love song." Sometime near the end of the show, she said, "I don't play songs like Troy anymore because I'm not that miserable-it took me a long time to get this way." She also made a comment about how beautiful the moon looked, and gestured to it when she sang "Petit Poulet" ("I am the moon also at night"). The crowd was thousands of people less than Seattle, only to our benefit. She was in a wonderful mood and we felt it. "I never know what to say, so all I can say is thank yoooouu," she assured us at one point. She was also, incidentally, wearing the same outfit as the night before, only this time I was much closer (about 2 1/2 meters away) and I could see that the three teal-colored rectangles on her shirt had white question marks in the middle of them. I'm sure her clothes must have been laundered between shows, but I was surprised nonetheless seeing them twice in a row. Her nails were painted black, and her hair looks like it's been colored auburn. She was radiant.

When she left the stage before her encore,she said, "That's it-goodnight!" and didn't come back to the stage for a few minutes, whereas I thought she came right back onto the stage -almost immediately-in Seattle. I started to get a little nervous that she wasn't coming back out, but I guess she was just making us work for it. My husband, who I dragged with me, said he had a hard time not crying the whole time. It was beautiful, and I'm glad I had the chance to see her the second night, as she shone much more brightly in that small and intimate gathering.