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

"The awesome power of chicks with guitars..." says Joan Osborne from the stage, in between songs, fast and slinky in a tight, shiny, blue skirt, black platforms and a thin tshirt, with belly exposed. She shakes and shimmies, and the lofty caterwaul of her voice lifts above the powerhouse quartet, two guitars, a bass and drums. An unobtrusive fifth member, a DJ provides some scratching from behind the drummer, filling out the linear, groove-heavy music with spots and flashes of intriguing noise.

Her set covers old and new material, the new announced and the audience forewarned. They love it all. In a tightly-knit group of inspired musicians her drummer shines. He leans back for the fills and leans into the beat, pounding confidently and smiling when all the disparate parts meld together into that whole sound, when everything and everybody comes together. When you know it's right.

The bass player pulls a loopy groove, sitting perfectly in the mix. You only notice her when she stops. Her foundation is her apparent musical anonymity, but that pulse rolls under your bottom and the shake is irresistable.

Two guitar players dress the sound with melodic entwining parts, one of them adding a haunting note on mandolin.

Joan's voice is a laser, cutting deeply into the ears and straight to the heart. She sings from that private place out and up, beyond the golden sunlit tinged trees above the amphitheatre. It's a lifting sound and the audience moves with her, up and out, over the San Francisco Bay, where the thick yellow sunset drops its slow hypnotic curtain. Soon the stagelights will be turned on, but, for now, it's the music alone, and it's enough.

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