"It feels like Star Wars tonight..."

"And the Empire's been defeated... and there will be medals and Wookies... And I'm the princess." 

More immortal words, these from Rufus Wainwright last night at Ravinia. A princess indeed. And an incredibly talented princess at that.

Backtracking for a moment, each month Gina and I take turns planning a monthly "surprise" date. Past surprise dates have included dinner at a nice steakhouse, high-end seafood, and attending a Jamaican cooking class. It's a lot of fun and we've gotten kind of competitive in trying to plan cool dates and keep the other person off balance as to when it will happen.

So August was my month to plan a date, and it only took one look at the Ravinia calendar to know what I wanted to do: The Ben Folds/Rufus Wainwright concert. It was perfect. It was music we both wanted to see, it was a night she'd never expect, it was a beautiful setting, it was... SOLD OUT.

Arrggghhh. I set about watching online scalpers and the like and thought I was out of luck until... one of my students saved the day with two extra lawn tickets. Sold to me at face value.

Fantastic.

So yesterday in the late afternoon, much to Gina's delight, I revealed the surprise. We stopped by the store, got some wine, cheese and crackers, and headed up to the northern suburbs. Ravinia is an ideal place for a summer concert. There's a large, beautiful pavilion with a great stage, but the bigger draw is the multi-acre lawn section, from which you can't see the stage, but you can lie back on your blanket, look up at the stars, drink your wine, and listen to the music being piped through speakers scattered around the grounds.

All for $15.

We got there at about 7:15 for the 8:00 show and the lawn was already packed with people. People really go all out with buffet tables, candles, you name it. So we wedged our way into the lawn with our little blanket and picnic backpack and settled into our food and wine.

At about 8:00, opener Ben Lee began his half an hour set. I realized that I'd heard one of his songs on WXRT recently. He's Australian and was an endearing performer who played good pop music. A nice beginning to the night.

Next was the main event: Rufus.

Rufus Wainwright simply makes music that no one else is making. A blend of classical, opera, folk, pop... as sophisticated as music gets but also honest, simple, and direct. And his voice... he's one of the few singers who has a voice that is actually better live than on CD. And his voice is amazing on CD. It's just that 1's and 0's can't capture the size, depth and range of his baritone. I doubt any audio format could. It defies description.

Rufus played for a little under an hour, leaving us wanting more. He played two or three new (unrecorded) songs, which were cool to hear. He played a bunch of songs off of his latest album, Want Two, a few from Want One, and just one from Poses. He also did a cover of the Leonard Cohen tune Hallelujah (made famous by Jeff Buckley).

Overall, it was nothing short of breathtaking.

His personality onstage matches his music: he's honest, sometimes to a fault, chatting the audience up about such things as the boot strap he was wearing as a choker (not kidding), how well-dressed the people in the front row were compared to the audience for a recent show in Atlantic City, and even letting out an audible "BLERH" during a song when he thought he made a mistake. Just amazing and inspiring.

Ben Folds, whom I like a lot, suffered from having to follow Rufus on. Or course, almost anybody would. He and his band seemed a bit sloppy and uninspired and I thought the overall sound was thin, as they were lacking a guitarist and playing as a piano, bass, drums trio. Which is fine for a lot of Ben Folds' older material, but on his second to last album, Rockin' the Suburbs (which, ironically, he was doing last night), he added a lot of cool heavy guitar, and the songs from that album sounded incomplete without it.

Ben Folds did play a hysterical piano rock version of the Dr. Dre/Snoop Dogg classic Gin 'n' Juice. Not kidding. Alone worth the price of the ticket.

All in all a great show.

In closing his set with the song Gay Messiah, Rufus said this: "In America right now, it's not a good time. If you're black, if you're gay, if you're a woman, if you're poor... you're fucked."

Indeed, Mr. Princess.

But for one night, you made it pretty easy to forget just how fucked.

jbg