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I listen to alternative rock when I get the chance. I'm not a CD buyer, so I mostly listen in the car. And now I have kids, so my radio time has been severely curtailed. ("Mommy, what does 'I was afraid of your seduction' mean?" "Hush up and eat your Chicken McNuggets.")
I know two Alanis Morissette songs, though, so when BOOKS & CULTURE asks me to watch her HBO concert, an hour-long promotion for her latest album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, I say yes. When I get the tape, I curl up on the sofa to watch it. I have the words to the new album so that I can follow along (not the typical Alanis-concert experience). My husband wanders in, so I watch Alanis with someone who loves me (also not ideal).
Alanis is chattering to a video DJ in a preshow interview, and the talk is vacuous, personal, simpering, and inarticulate; all gestures, facial expressions, and body movements. She's playing God, I discover, in Kevin Smith's forthcoming movie Dogma. The movie is a comedy of sorts, and she treats her appearance lightly. The camera cuts to her fans, waiting in line. "We're all a family!" shrieks one girl, before others jostle her aside to get on camera.
The camera shifts to the Rosemont ballroom in New York. Alanis is pacing up and down just offstage while the band whips the crowd into screaming, standing chaos. When she's ready, she charges into a roar of approval and band noise, checkered by flashing strobes and constantly moving spots. I don't catch any words to the song until halfway though the first verse. "I've watched them leave their families in pursuit of your nirvana," Alanis sings, walking backwards, bent double. "How much will this cost, guru? How much longer 'til you completely absolve me?"
I find this song on page 2 of my lyrics. Alanis is dissing Eastern mysticism, which is a nice departure from the alternative standard. "I've heard them rotely repeat your teachings with elitism," she bellows, still walking backwards. "I've seen their upward glances in hopes of instant salvation." Apparently they shouldn't be looking upward at all; prescription is buried in the middle of the song ("I've seen them overlooking god in their own essence"). Watching the faces of the audience, I wonder whether they can discover inner essence in a place where the music, the dark, the noise, and the strobing lights create something close to an altered state. They are mesmerized by the crash of music and the keen of Alanis's voice.
At least she's walking forward now, fitting her mike into the stand at the front of the stage before launching into a happy song full of contradictions and reassurance. I actually know this one from the radio. "I'm broke but I'm happy, I'm poor but I'm kind. … And what it all comes down to my friends, yeah, is that everything's just fine, fine, fine. Cause I've got one hand in my pocket and the other one's hailing a taxi cab." (Incomprehensible, but interesting.) For the next song, Alanis picks up a guitar (it's the first time I've seen her play any instrument at all) while she sings, "Are you still mad that I focused only on your potential? Are you still mad that I compared you to all my forty-year-old male friends? Of course you are. Of course you are."
"Look," my husband says, "she can't play the guitar. She hasn't moved her hand the whole song. It's all one chord." Apparently one chord is about her limit, because she puts the guitar down for her next song and doesn't pick it up again. (Leslie Howe, a former collaborator, once told a reporter that Alanis auditioned for MCA with a video clip rather than a live performance, because her music was created with "keyboards and computer-sequenced, programmed rhythms.")
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