Where ever I travel in the USA I am always on the look out for good concerts by artists that I have rarely had the chance to see play live. Whilst in Houston, Texas I noticed one with Courtney Love playing a solo show at the House of Blues. The last time I saw her play live was with her earlier band Hole back in 1999 at a Big Day Out festival in Australia. Now Courtney has quite the reputation and has had a well documented history with drug abuse and the like, so it was with some trepidation that on a whim I headed downtown to get a ticket and see the show.
Why I was worried, I do not know in the end? She was brilliant! Throughout the show Courtney interacted with the crowd and at the end she said something along the lines that “Nobody can say that sucked” and she was dead right. The huge crowd applause and roar (including mine) at that comment summed it all up!
Although Courtney has a new solo album coming out later this year, this set was purely of back catalogue material of predominately Hole songs (her band from 1989-2002 and 2010-2012) and It was a star-studded set list too opening with Plump (Hole 1994) then moving onto Miss World (Hole 1994), Gold Dust Woman (a cover of a Fleetwood Mac song released as a single by Hole in 1996), Skinny Little Bitch (Hole 2010), Pacific Coast Highway (Hole 2010), Violet (Hole 1994), Malibu (Hole 1998), Letter to God (Hole 2010), Asking For It (Hole 1994), For Once In Your Life (Hole 2010), Pretty on the Inside (Hole 1991) and a crowd favourite Celebrity Skin (Hole 1998).
During the show Courtney smoked, drank Slippery Elm tea, had a shot of Tequila (saying she doesn’t know how people drink that stuff….Crack on the other hand! Hilarious), spoke with the crowd, cracked jokes, said we need to be louder to match her ego etc. She was great!
Her encore included songs that have not been played live since the 90’s (the first couple were just her and one of the band on an acoustic guitar, then when the rest of her current band joined them on stage they just kind of went along with the flow as they had never or rarely played these songs live before)! The encore included a Rolling Stones cover – Under My Thumb (1966) along with Petals (Hole 1998), Softer, Softest (Hole 1994) and Beautiful Son (a Hole single released in 1993). The concert finished with the classic Doll Parts (Hole 1994) and Courtney Love then threw rose petals into the crowd with much applause.
Thanks Courtney, what a great night! I thoroughly recommend you check out this tour in North America if you get a chance. It is only a limited dates tour but well worth catching somewhere!
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