Tori Amos lifers lined up in front of Rough Trade in Williamsburg yesterday morning starting at 6 a.m. to be certain they’d have a chance of seeing the iconic songstress perform a rare in-store that night at 7 p.m. Wristbands to the show were being given out to those who pre-ordered Tori’s fourteenth release, Unrepentant Geraldines, which is due out on May 13.
Last week Spin announced a contest on Twitter awarding five wristbands to re-tweeters picked at random, and the combo of that mixed with the early morning line pointed to a packed event (after all, she’s doing two nights at the Beacon Theater in August). But an hour before Tori was scheduled to take seat at her piano, Rough Trade was tweeting that wristbands were still available.
Speculation as to why the in-store was only half full is neither here nor there. Blame it on the rain, or blame it on the fact that New Yorkers are that mad that it’s still 50 degrees outside — either way, the people who showed up were given a mesmerizing performance by Tori and everyone else missed out.
Playing a short set that consisted mostly of tracks off of her new album, with some surprises thrown in — such as “Strange” and “Take to the Sky,” which she closed with — Tori went from 0 (“Hi, hello, thanks for coming.”) to 100 (everyone sighing deeply and wiping cry fog off their glasses; okay, maybe that was just me, but I doubt it) in the blink of an eye. Afterwards she stuck around to sign autographs and pose for pictures which flooded Instagram before I got off the subway home.
Spin attempted to live-stream the event, but judging by the comments on this post it didn’t work out too well.
If you missed it, Undented has more videos to help fill in the blanks.
