Sooo.. I am.. a snob. When it comes to how I view my movies or how my music should sound, I want it to be a certain way. The same thing holds especially true for a live show, I want to hear the artist. I have only seen a few big concerts in my time (Prince, Pink Floyd, Maze) that were spot on excellent shows. THIS … this should have been one of them.

“Hello, my name is Jill Scott”

With that, a beaming lady stood at the microphone in a long flowing animal print blouse and black leggings. Her natural pulled back creating a poof and a sweet melodic voice. Indeed, this should have been Jill Scott. As this woman sang, she touched us with her stories of love and life’s ups and downs. With a small, but spot on group of musicians backing her, this lady entertained the Nokia Centre for nearly a solid 2.5 hours. She ran through a growing repertoire of songs that included her recent hits including Golden, The Fact Is (I Need You), Cross My Mind, as well as some of her soon to be classics (and current crowd favorites) A Long Walk, The Way and He Loves Me (Lyzel In E Flat). All of this, added with tracks from her recently released joint (My Love, Don’t Hate On Me and Crown Royal to name a few), made for a great set. A woman who took time to encourage the artists in the audience to follow their dreams and keep their focused on their idea of making it and not others. With the extremely well lit show… it just should have been one I could rank up with the others. No dancers, no lip syncing, no tight outfits. Just a lady, her backup singers, her band and a few thousand of her newest girlfriends. I say that because often times, I felt I was ease dropping on a Saturday afternoon conversation between two women at an outdoor café. She was real with what she said about her life, love, sex in her songs and various ad-libs.

And yet…

It wasn’t the real Jill Scott. It really wasn’t her golden voice. It was a lady, who appeared to be Ms. Scott, being drowned out at times by her small rhythm section (consisting of a Saxophone, an English Horn and a Trombone), her percussion, keyboards and drummer whose high hat sounded like a drunken nightmare. The bass drum was mixed and mic’d as such I felt there was someone was sitting in the arena bumping their 18” subwoofers. With the full band playing, the singers, Jill and her singers, were quickly drowned out as were our ears. I am not sure who was in charge of sound, but the volume for this show was waay too high. It was like listening to a radio with the squelch turned all the way to max. thus, there were times I couldn’t understand exactly what her ad-libs were much less some of the lyrics. Thankfully, a number of her songs require less in terms of music thus her melodic voice was truly able to be heard. It was truly disheartening after having been to this same arena two years before to see an excellent Maze show. Thus I will not hear of it being an acoustics issue.

I want to see the show again under better circumstances. Ms. Scott plays tonight in Houston and her tour continues through the months of February and March along the east coast.

-J