Sarah Slean Live at Starlight

A couple of nights ago, a bunch of us went to see Sarah Slean live at the Starlight Club here in Waterloo. I only knew a couple of songs by Sarah Slean — not by heart — and the prospect of being in a room full of people going crazy over seeing their favourite artist performing live on stage kind of freaked me out (social anxiety disorder in effect) so I wasn’t really looking forward to going.
To coax myself into going, I tried to look at it from another point of view. I tried to look at it as a chance to do something I’d never done before: taking pictures of an artist performing live on stage. Thought it would be fun. So I went, took a lot of pictures (most of which are blurry and grainy, as you can see from the collage), and actually enjoyed the music.

Anyway, in order to get into the club, other than having a ticket, you had to show a photo ID. I didn’t have my passport handy and the only other photo ID I had was this ID card issued by the local government of the place I lived back in Indonesia. It was a poorly laminated piece of paper with a really bad, grimacing picture of me on it. I was worried the guy wouldn’t let me in, but I guess I was worrying for no reason. The guy was actually thrilled to see my ID card. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said. “I wouldn’t even try to figure out what it says. It’s awesome!” And he let me in. That guy really made my night. Even better, we got ourselves one of the front tables for coming in early!

Another person who made my night was Jorane (collage), a French-Canadian singer/songwriter who was opening for Sarah Slean. She was awesome. She sounds kind of like Tori Amos with a French accent and a cello. She kept smiling during her performance and I just couldn’t help but smiling back at her. I had to say that I enjoyed her performance better than I did Sarah Slean’s. I guess I appreciate singer/songwriters who perform without a band better.

Oh, and the crowd wasn’t half as scary as I’d expected them to be. In fact, they were so tame that the bouncer looked like he was about to die of boredom anytime soon. And that was the story of my very first clubbing experience. The end.