Last night Courtney Love came to town.  I suppose we should begin to refer to her as Courtney Michelle, but I don’t think that a name change is going to re-brand this women in any serious way do you?   Look, there is no denying Courtney has her detractors.  The women has been through hell and some of it was her own doing.  Still, at 45 years young (for now that is, she has a birthday coming up on July 9th), she seems more able to let the criticism bounce off of her.  She’s got balls and I admire her for that.  I was on the fence about attending, but the truth is, as soon as I saw  Hole listed as a June show at Boston’s House of Blues, I was drawn to the show.  I was jokingly calling it a train wreck I just had to see, but I was wrong.  Oh, she did space some words during her impromptu rendition of a recent outtake called Stand Up M*F’er, but she and her band did some solid work last night.  Some idiots through some stuff up on the stage, mostly beer bottles and water bottles, but she never lost her cool, not even for a second.  I was praying she wouldn’t.   Why let her detractors win?  A guy next to me mumbled to his girlfriend as Courtney was trying to remember the words at one point and said “this is what I came to see.”  I remember nodding against my will.   Thanks not really what I can to see even though I’d heard the rumors.
I don’t care what anyone says about women like Sinead O’Connor or Courtney Love.  When you rock, you rock…end of story.   Love does like to stop the show and almost chit chat with her audience.  I don’t have any problem with that.  It makes her human.  Last night, for instance, we learned that her smash hit “Doll Parts” was written at somebody named Joyce’s house near Harvard Square.   We learned that one of the first albums she ever owned was a Leonard Cohen record and she covered one of his songs during the show called “Take This Longing” after a nice intro.  We learned that some of the lyrics to her song “Awful” were written about a then 22 year old rocker named Gavin Rossdale (of Bush fame) and that he was hot way back when.  We learned that everything we do in life is all about getting laid (what’s the definition of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results again?…I better work on this).  And we learned Courtney wears $800 panties…which we witnessed on the outside of her leggings.   There was a 50-50 chance of a wardrobe malfunction at one point, but all this aside, Hole put on a great show as far as I’m concerned.  I get a real kick out of her whole rock chick persona, but you still have to deliver the goods.  She does that and then some.
After a “Dirty Water” voice warm up they dug into “Pretty On The Inside” which morphed into “Sympathy For The Devil.”  Curious, but I wasn’t thinking about covers going in.   Later on they covered “Play With Fire” which you may recognize as another Rolling Stones classic, but that was dedicated to all the bitches in the audience living off of Daddy’s money.  An issue she clearly has had trouble with over the years.  In a completely unrelated story the next  song following “Sympathy” was her hit single “Skinny Little Bitch.”   If you came to hear “Doll Parts, Miss World, Violet, Plump, Celebrity Skin, Malibu, Awful, Reasons To Be Beautiful” and on and on she didn’t disappoint.  I would have thrown in “Softer, Softest” and “Asking For It” for good measure, but I’m not complaining.   The thing is, she seemed to be having fun instead of going through the motions.  One woman whined, just enough so she could hear, when she started covering “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails, but she professionally finished the song and then told her politely to go see “Panic at  The Disco” or something if she didn’t like it.  The crowd was more with her than against her for a change it seemed.   Like I said earlier, some  slugs did toss stuff at her to see if they could get under her Celebrity Skin, but she ignored them.   One gigantic dude, dressed in heels and full Courtney Love regalia got her attention during one of her numbers and Courtney laughed and smiled like you rarely see her it seems.   She had a nice rapport with both the audience and her band  which, according to Wikipedia, consists these days of Micko Larkin on lead guitar, Shawn Dailey on bass and Stu Fisher on drums.  All were excellent.  Apparently, we learned in another one of Love’s chatty moments, there have been 16 members of Hole over the years.
I have to tell you, I was expecting an uneven performance and what I got was my money’s worth.   Most of her new record, Nobody’s Daughter, was played and several of those tracks, such as “Pacific Coast Highway,” complete with its own intro about a relationship with a city (presumably Malibu) and or individual that has gone sour, were very well received.  For me personally though, “Letter To God” with its tear your heart out lyrics, is really a step in the right direction for Love.  I don’t know if she’ll ever be completely healed, but she seems relatively coherent and friendly these days.  The covers of Big Star’s “Thirteen,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Gold Dust Woman” and Nine Inch Nails “Closer” were a blast.   I am rooting for her to succeed.   I don’t care what she’s done, who she’s done, what her politics are or what people think of her; she rocks.  She’s in New Jersey tonight, but if you get a chance go and see her when she shows up in your town.  Her band is tight and she’s soldiering on nicely.  If you are a Hole fan you won’t be disappointed.  And, as in my case, you might be pleasantly surprised.