Johnette Napolitano, Oct. 5, Tin Angel

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Johnette Napolitano, Oct. 5, Tin Angel

POSTED: Saturday, October 6, 2007, 10:00 AM

Filed Under: Music | Show Last Night

Have mercy on us, everyone

Johnette Napolitano seemed a little tired when she took the Tin Angel’s stage for Friday night’s late show. See, two weeks ago, she turned half a century, and she celebrated by partying every single night in September and into October. No matter. Dressed in a black leotard, Chucks, and a sheer gold skirt that kept threatening to fall off, Napolitano held forth on Burning Man, Miss South Carolina’s geography gaffe and Halliburton’s infiltration of New Orleans. Then she went a couple rounds with a rose-bearing female fan who seemed to be pimping out her husband. Of course, what Napolitano does best is belt, and in such a small room, the microphone was superfluous. She dipped into her new solo album, Scarred, but the lion’s share of songs came from her work with Concrete Blonde, including “Little Conversations,” “Joey” and “Mexican Moon.” But nothing topped “I Don’t Need a Hero,” when she ripped into the chorus: “I don’t need a hero / I don’t need a soldier / I did when I was younger / But now I’m so much older.” When it first came out, on 1987’s Bloodletting, Napolitano probably didn’t envision singing those lines two decades later, but she drew out the last word and dunked it with “I’m 50, bitch!” She set fire to “Ghost Riders in the Sky” and made herself choke up on the a cappella AIDS lament “Tomorrow, Wendy,” which she turned into a vigil for Iraqi children and senior citizens before spazzing out on President Bush and abruptly ending the show. The lights came up, the house music came on and someone filched her setlist, but much of the adoring audience stuck around waiting for an encore that never materialized. She was gracious, funny and most likely toasted. And when she was done, she was done. Fuck 30. If this is what middle age looks like, 50’s the new 20.

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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