Monday, September 15, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

REVIEW: Presley sings personal notes failed by engineers

Poor sound system detracts from show at House of Blues

Lisa Marie Presley performs Saturday at the House of Blues. Photo by Jeff Scheid.

Lisa Marie Presley's father died when she was 9. She never got to be a teenage daddy's girl. She never got to rebel against him, to reconcile issues with him. Or to hear him counsel her through her drug phase, or her marriages, or through moments of self-doubt.

He, Elvis, the king of rock and roll, did not get to see his daughter sing as a headliner for the first time, at age 35, at the House of Blues on Saturday. He did not get to see how much of him there was in her.

Shaky leg. Curled lip. Sleepy eyes. Husky voice. Restless energy. He was not there to see her pace, a lion in a cage, a small universe for a woman with a world at her feet.

Her subjects cheered, 1,700 of them, a remarkably kempt sprout of women (and men) in their 30s and 40s. Many probably paid to hear her very personal lyrics, their peek at her overview of a life of Presley.

But the people Presley paid to engineer the sound system left her microphone muffled all night, stifling her words in a fuzz. They failed her debut, no matter how well her six band members played, no matter that a tour photographer captured the night from the stage, no matter that confetti exploded at the crowd at the end.

True believers sang along, anyway, to her song about her dad, "Nobody Noticed It":

"Well, I wish that I could have spent a little more time with you, yeah. Tears on my ceiling. Weren't you watching? ... You were lovely then. All that you had to endure -- nobody noticed it."

They sang along to "Lights Out," a song about her presumed legacy:

"Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis. That's where my family's buried and gone. Last time I was there, I noticed a space left next to them, there in Memphis, in the damn back yard."

They sang along to her ode to her son and daughter, "So Lovely":

"You came here to save me, didn't you? ... Sometimes, don't listen to your mamma, no. And don't do as I do."

Her declarations were firm ("I'm no longer your erection, or your congregation"), as expressed by a punk who knows tethered luxury.

Her outfit and demeanor sure were punk. She wore gartered leggings that bagged like ancient stockings would. A black skirt bore a logo of her initials on the back, "LMFP." The "F" did not stand for "follow," but was a statement of frustrated independence.

Presley's vocals moved like a rocker's, distinctly, if not classically trained. She sang in three tones. Her verses were twang-rock gruff, like Sheryl Crow's were at age 35. Her choruses were open-throated, very Cher. And sometimes, she quacked like Macy Gray.

Presley alluded to her Gray shade with a laugh when she introduced her band, and then herself, as, "And I'm Macy Gray."

For her first album, "To Whom It May Concern," Presley hired top singer-songwriter musicians to help shape her songs: Alanis Morissette's producer Glen Ballard, and on and on and on.

But in concert, her melodies of sustained echoes, on guitars and keyboards, were hit and miss, as is the case with many debut artists with only one album to draw from.

"Lights Out" was best in show, strong start to finish. And an acoustic-guitar version of "Excuse Me" skated a cool, rough edge. She should have steered clear of high, flat notes in "To Whom It May Concern." But a fun cover of Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker" rocked the house.

That gave hope to Presley's potential cover of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," which was listed as the finale of her official set list. But she didn't perform it. Maybe the night grew too late for it. She didn't start until 10:20 p.m.

If the sound system had worked right, the show might have validated Presley as a pro, even if she could learn more in-the-moment presence from a Joan Osborne or a Nikka Costa.

As things stood, it was at least the marquee introduction of a gracious icon. She observed her station in life with a fan at midshow.

"You have a tattoo of me on your chest. Is that real?" she asked a man. He answered. She replied with surprise and respect, "O ... K."

Presley's pedigree was unavoidable. After she sang her first song, "Sinking In," she smiled big with relief, or joy, or both, while the crowd applauded at length.

This was one of many moments in which LMFP seemed not to be a logo, or a celebrity, or a billionaire punk who could afford confetti, but rather a brave little girl and a woman with a past and with no past, who at 35 was embarking on a career in a field that was forged by the man who wasn't there.