Pondering Fiona Apple's local appeal
Rotten turnout for city-area concert hard to stomach

By George Lang

Published: November 3, 2006

In the concert business, nothing compares to the awful, disheartening embarrassment of a nearly empty room, and this is especially true when few people show up for someone who deserves better. But I have never experienced anything quite like the Fiona Apple concert Oct. 27. She got hit by a tepid storm, in which fewer than 1,000 people showed up at Norman's Lloyd Noble Center.

Organizers set up the "theater seating" configuration, meaning they only designated a wedge of the arena for Apple's show. Even so, attendance was below what it should have been for that configuration and certainly below what it should have been for an artist whose latest compact disc, "Extraordinary Machine," was one of the best-reviewed CDs of 2005.

My anxiety level shoots sky-high in these situations. I experience a sort of empathetic embarrassment for the artist, for the merchandise sellers taking down T-shirt displays halfway through the show, and for my fellow audience members sitting uncomfortably amid a sea of empty seats. I even felt a little bad for opening act Mason Jennings, whose bendy, approximate approach to singing constituted glissando abuse. I almost wanted to leave, but then the arena would have been noticeably less full.

At least part of this anxiety had to do with Apple herself, an artist who was once notoriously tempestuous during less-than-ideal concert situations, chewing out the sound men and threatening rock critics during an unfortunate New York concert six years ago. I was braced for bad things.

There is no one quite like Apple performing today. She can be smooth and torchy in her delivery one minute, and bellowing and roaring with biblical "great vengeance and furious anger" the next. Then there's the dancing: She dances like she's trying to shake loose a demon or a hungry rodent — a little like Elaine Benes in the "Little Kicks" episode of "Seinfeld"; a little like my toddler son, who has the spirit if not the technique. When fans are conditioned by MTV and BET to expect musicians to move like they just graduated from Juilliard, Apple's uncontrolled approach to dance is disarming. But it looks and feels real, and that counts for something in these computer-corrected times.

But she was gracious about the emptiness of the arena, describing the experience as like being "alone together." It was the final show of the tour before performing at the Vegoose festival in Las Vegas, and she seemed to be giving her all. During those weird, late-'90s meltdown days, admitting you were a Fiona Apple fan required a great deal of equivocation and explanation, but this was different. She was, quite surprisingly, a good sport.

Why was it so empty? Apple has not enjoyed a genuine radio hit in years, and most Oklahoma City pop radio stations don't reach back to 1996-97 on a regular basis to play "Shadowboxer" or "Criminal." She has become a cult act who can sell out midsize arenas in larger cities, but here, Apple played more like a dim memory, and advertising, promotion and press attention could not make up for it.

I could complain for days about Jessica Simpson's ability to fill the Ford Center despite having only a miniature microbe of talent, but that would be comparing Apples and ... I don't know, Chicken of the Sea? There does not seem to be a solution to this dilemma. Unless an artist is simply iconic, she can't do it without an in-your-face and in-your-ears media onslaught. It doesn't bode well for the specialty acts that are too big for the clubs and too small for the basketball arenas. For Apple, it meant seeing more chairs than faces. That cannot feel good, even if you find a way to smile through it.

I have seen the future of rock 'n' roll, and its name is Brakes. What looked to be a busman's holiday for members of the British indie bands Electric Soft Parade and British Sea Power emerged as being better than either of those bands. Having gone crazy with the dance beats and political humor, Brakes' upcoming disc, "Beatific Visions," veers toward cowpunk and plows through 11 tracks in 29 minutes. Brilliant!