Aimee Mann performed last night at Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago's Millennium Park—for free! So naturally I went.
The weather couldn't have been better, so the picnic area was totally full. Which meant that the pavilion itself had plenty of seats. Which meant I got to see her directly rather than just projected on a big screen.
Just for posterity, here's her set list:
- 4th of July
- Little Bombs
- Patient Zero
- The Moth
- Labrador
- Humpty Dumpty
- You Can't Help Me
- You Never Loved Me
- Goose Snow Cone (which, she explained, really is about her cat)
- Save Me
- Going Through the Motions
- Borrowing Time
- Long Shot
- Encore: One
- Encore: Wise Up
- Encore: Voices Carry
I love Aimee Mann's songs. I am conscious, however, that when her songs become my life's soundtrack, things are seriously out of joint. Sample lyric, from "Long Shot," which opened her 1996 album I'm With Stupid: "You fucked it up / You should have quit / Til circumstances / Had changed a bit." Or from "Save Me:" "You look like / A perfect fit / For a girl in need of / A tourniquet."
Seriously good, but seriously unhappy.
But totally worth the ticket price, I must say. And now I need to download Mental Illness, her last album.