Joan Osborne
Berkeley, CA
Fri, August 29th, 1997
By Allen Whitman

On a sunny Friday, outside, in the green and breezy Berkeley Hills, the band putters with their equipment, soundchecking gently. The huge P.A. system picks up their tentative musings and blasts them from an enormous array of speakers, symmetrically arranged on either side of the stage. On all sides, concrete bleachers climb quickly up the sides of this outdoor bowl, scooped out of the earth. If you're seated up atthe top, you will get an unobstructed view of a glorious sunset over the San Francisco Bay.

It's a real rock show, with Joan Osborne, live, onstage, and it's a benefit for Planned Parenthood, Bay Area Women Against Rape (BAWAR) and the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations. Apparently even the local stagehands' union (I.A.T.S.E.) is kicking in $250.00 for the cause. Everyone wants to support a good cause. It's a beautiful day and everyone is happy, zipping around, talking on cell phones, radio telephones and walkie-talkies. Laminates and loud Hawaiian shirts abound.

Tall eucalyptus trees border the high hemisphere of green lawn, the nosebleed seats with spectacular views. You can easily see the instantly recognizable clock tower of the prominent university.

During Joan's soundcheck, the band vamps comfortably on a vaguely middle-eastern groove. Joan's soaring, dead-on howls lift and swoop over the beat. In an Indian mood, she calls and rips up and down the twelve-tone scale, stopping occasionally to trill on a particularly atonal sound. They stop, after about five minutes, and the dying echoes bounce off the surrounding hillside. Some casual conversation ensues, between Joan and her soundman, and the band kicks up again, into a hiphop inflected pop number. Joan bounces around the stage, playing off of her bass player and guitarist. She's clearly up for the show and who wouldn't be, in this startlingly open location, under sun and sky.

Downstairs and backstage, cooks stuff the tables with food, the towel man (with his young son) brings in stacks of white, plastic-wrapped towels and stagehands stand nearby, arms at the ready for any lift and carry that needs done.