Jose At The Light Show

Doreen Barber on Jose Gonzales and Mia Doi Todd over the pond at Florida's The Social

March 1st, 2008

I had purchased my ticket to Jose Gonzales a little over three weeks in advance, handing my cash for that and a ticket to see !!! on March 8th to a man working the Social's box office ticket booth. The area directly in front of the plexiglass window reeked of piss. "It smells really bad here," I said to the box office guy as he handed me the two tickets, which I grabbed with the hand that wasn't covering my nose in a vain effort to shield myself from the stench. He shrugged in response, probably accustomed to the random urine effluvia that occasionally permeates Orlando's downtown. Perhaps we need more Starbucks locations to provide their toilet services to a caffeinated public. Or maybe a good scrubbing of soap and water would do the trick.

So, the night comes, and I get a phonecall from my friend Joe. "Dude, where are you? Are you coming?" he shouted over the din of scenesters. "Uh, don't doors open at nine?" I ask. "They opened at eight." Man. So, I get down to the Social double-quick, finding the place peppered with people with neat handmade "Need Tickets" signs, looking longingly as I whip my ticket out of my wallet as I got into the small queue to be ID'ed. I open the large wooden door to find an endless ocean of people, tittering in the darkness as they wait for someone, anyone, to take the stage.

After locating my friends Joe and Fran, then locating drinks for us, the stage was eventually taken by the opening act Mia Doi Todd, along with a gentleman with various drums (mostly struck with his hands). Todd is a petite figure, with long, curly hair, wearing a flowing skirt and a guitar. She plays a number of songs that seem more suited to cuddling with your cats, as opposed to listening to in a dark bar with people becoming progressively drunker over yonder, making it hard to really give me an opportunity to define whether I actually really like Todd. Joe makes a comment that she reminds him of Joni Mitchell, which seems to offend Fran, who ripostes that Mitchell is on "a pedestal."

Todd does seem to handle herself well against the rude chatter, and throughout she’s nice enough to answer the odd gentleman who shouting questions like "Where are you from?" and "What's your favourite colour?" For those of you interested, she's from Los Angeles, "which is not that different from here," and she likes the colour plum. Also, she is currently promoting her new album, Gea. Todd’s voice is undeniably nice, and her live performance well-done, if unremarkable. She deserves her applause at the end, and perhaps away from the slurring murmur of Saturday nights we’d really fall for her charms. I think I'd get my mother one of her CDs. Todd’s set finishes shortly after 10, leaving the crowd to continue in its agitated anticipation of José González. Bathroom breaks are made, more beer gotten, and people shift restlessly about chattering sweet little gig-nothings to each other about haircuts, jobs, and such. Then, here he comes. You would think that once José González took the stage, the crowd would go silent, but, despite the rousing cheer he receives as he strides upon stage--sporting 'fro-like hair and the beard of a man who probably hasn't enjoyed a good shave in for some time--there are members of the crowd who still carry their chatting on while he chirps the first song from In Our Nature, 'How Low'. In fact, it's not until 'Heartbeats' that the crowd became hushed and even a little solemn, hugging their significant others tighter while the partnerless hold their bottles and aluminium cans close, watching quite awed at the performance.

My one complaint with Gonzales’s show tonight is the overuse of the stage lighting. I’m lucky to be in a corner of the pit that avoids the full-on lights, but I see various intrepid souls become blinded by the obnoxious glare hitting them square in the face. It’s distracting for someone like me, casually observing others whose eyes are flooded with light, but a severe damper for the victims of the visual assault. Imagine a flashlight shining directly at your face in the dark, but the flashlight is built for a giant (or an Orc, for you D&D fans). There’s a point during González's 'Broken Arrow' when one of those big lights shine on the disco ball in the center of the main room and makes the masses a bit unruly ("Woo! Shiny!"), but our José really didn't need a fancy light show to enhance his performance. I think many of us would have just been happy with a simple spotlight as he sat in the little chair on stage, performing his acoustic magic. There is an upside to all the light antics though when I find a quarter on the ground, and it isn’t too sticky!

As Gonzales leads into 'Lovestain' he tells the crowd to clap along, but as a few errant hand-claps fly from the well-liquored and well-meaning, he stops playing for a second to clarify. "Um, you can start clapping... after a while... and only the people who know the song!" After a short refrain, the hand-clappers in the know take charge, leading the unsure and unsteady along through the song. Two of the famous Gonzales covers, one of Kylie Minogue’s 'Hand on your Heart' and Massive Attack’s 'Teardrop' end the original set, before the encore, where a wonderful cover of Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' steals the show. It’s insanely good, and tonight Gonzales has steadily grown in my eyes as a purveyor of intricate pop magic.

© 2008 Doreen Barber

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