So yesterday I went to see Beth Hart for the first time, at the Melina Mercouri Open Air Theatre, and I had really high expectations from her.
I can honestly say that they were all absolutely fulfilled.
What the whole audience experienced there, is something that words aren’t enough to describe, as Beth Hart came hard as a rock and soft as a wave and simply “made love” with the Greek audience.
But let’s start from the beginning. The opening act was the Greek blues rock duo, The Big Nose Attack, who filled the stage with its energy and passion and warmed us up for more blues to come.
When the Greeks finished, Beth Hart began her performance singing her heart out with the “Sinner’s Prayer” – a classic song, which immediately shook us and got us all up from the chairs dancing and prepared us for what was about to come.
Is there any other singer/composer with more communicative skills than her? I really don’t think so, as I have been present in many concerts so far and I have never seen an artist thanking the audience so many times during the whole show. I haven’t ever seen any artist sharing on stage his/hers most private moments with the crowd, showing courage and humanity, like she did, – she actually admitted that, when she was in her late 20s, she experienced serious addiction to drugs and alcohol and that she hated herself so much and her self-esteem was so low, that she ended up cutting herself in order to feel alive. I haven’t ever seen any artist performing a song especially for his/her husband/wife – which, in Hart’s case, was the super romantic “My California”. And thanking him in public for marrying her, claiming to be really lucky with her marriage. After that song, Hart’s husband, who had been behind the stage, jumped out from the shadows hugging her and kissing her passionately on stage.
Beth Hart came in Athens with one goal – to sing violently her most popular songs like the rhythmic “Jazz Man”, the sexy “Close to my Fire”, the touching and inspired “Leave the Lights On”. Of course, the songs “Your Heart is as Black as Night” and “I’ll Take Care of You” weren’t missing from the setlist. She also introduced us to less known to the public songs, like the “Lullaby of the Leaves”- an old jazz song, which lifted our spirit high among the stars, between the rocks that were standing all around us in the Theatre, and moved everyone in the audience. She came determined to give everything with her performance, her growling, her screams, her crawling on the floor, after having poured on her head an entire bottle of water (she did that more than once). One of the top moments of the concert was, when she came down from the stage and walked among the crowd (like Moses), while singing. Hart said that the Greeks were the best audience she ever had and that she would be really lucky if she could visit Greece more than once every year! And she claimed that Greece makes her feel so, so sexy, something she proved to us, by swaying her body with passion in almost every song – the stage almost caught fire and we all were burnt by her flames!
To sum up, the power of her voice and her personality is something to be remembered- I feel bad for those who didn’t come to the show, to enjoy this unique artist and honest person, who isn’t afraid of being judged and is 100% true, who doesn’t mind getting “dirty” as she said, laying down, singing with her whole heart and soul.
Truly remarkable.
Iro Kalligeri
