So I've waited 4 years to see Hole, 4 long years to see the band that is probably my favorite band in the enitre world. And I was not dissappointed last night at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston. The show fulfilled my every expectation, expelled some demons and kicked some major ass!

Hole did not wait to be introduced, but rather wandered onstage behind the radio guy. Courtney is a vision, tall, shapely, the epitome of womanliness. She came out in black leather/vinyl pants, a black velvet tank top, high-heel boots and a pink, flowery, Stevie-Nicks-y shawl over her strong, square shoulders. She was smoking a cigarette, trailing ashes across the stage and trying to grab the radio guy's butt as he introduced them. I didn't hear a word he said, I was overwhelmed by the sight of Courtney, realizing that I was truly going to see Hole...it had not felt real until then.

They opened with "Awful" off "Celebrity Skin" and the set list went something like this (the order is messed up, but I am sure of the order of the first 3 songs and the last 4, in between it gets hazy):

Awful
Miss World
Reasons to be Beautiful
Pretty on the Inside
Heaven Tonight
Beautiful Son
Some Bob Dylan Cover that I couldn't recognize because I couldn't hear, I was so deaf by now..
Celebrity Skin
Dumb
Dying
Malibu
Plump
Use Once and Destroy
Doll Parts
Boys on the Radio


Encores:
Northern Star
Into Your Arms
Violet

So that's roughly the set list. Courtney chatted (and smoked) non-stop throughout the show, from yelling at the roadie when she was having technical difficulties, "Roadie guy! Somebody! Fix this!" to yelling at a man sitting down in the front row. "Why don't you give your seat to someone who likes us, cause like, it's boring to have to watch you.", to general yelling at the crowd who was "too genteel" as she put it. A lot of people were sitting down, some not by choice as up in the balcony the security was telling everyone to sit. I staunchly refused as did my sister, we came to sing and to dance and to take in as much of Courtney as we could. At one point when she was looking in our direction, I waved and then raised my arms and she saw me and smiled, at the end she came back over and looked up towards our direction again and said thank you, to us and to the people behind us who were standing and dancing.

They had some technical problems, but overall they played great. The show was charged with the same raw energy and emotion that has made Love (in)famous. She is full of dark humor, cracking jokes at her own expense, candidly expressing her feeling towards other musicians, good or bad, no minced words, and she possesses this touch of little girl cuteness.. when she's speaking nicely. She blew me away. She put the guitar away for awhile, saying she needed a break and danced around shaking the tambourine, very Stevie Nicks-like. She joked about stage diving, but said the corwd was too sedate for it..but she flashed us twice earlier in the show, show, saying, 'boring' at the lack of reaction. For the encores she and Melissa came out hiding behind Courtney's pink floral shawl, and when Courtney threw it down she was wearing a pink sequined showgirl tutu thing, with pink feathers at the butt. She looked amazing, so feminine and so powerful all at once. I loved it! She played Northern Star, much rougher sounding than the album version, but it silenced a lot of the more skeptical crowd members with it's beauty and power. Then Melissa, who is quite show-stopping herself, introduced the next song as a dedication to the 'sweetest bostonian we know' and Courtney went on to say they both dated him. They went into "Into Your Arms" by the Lemonheads, clearly speaking of Evan Dando. "Violet " ended this amazing show at a deafening level of sound and energy and such emotion, Courntey was sort of crying towards the end. Amazing, Breathtaking and so Beautiful. Courtney Love never went away, she is still there under the designer clothes and fabulous hair, tougher, stronger and more powerful than ever, watch out!
 
 
 

Faye Pantazopoulos