I’ve been listening to @catpowerofficial for years and years, ever since @aliciammmm first introduced her to me a lifetime ago, but I never got the chance to see her perform live—there’s a whole era of artists that shaped me from afar when I lived in places they never ventured, and I’d long resigned myself to keeping it that way. But when I heard that Chan was playing at @kingcountychomp this year, and for free (!!!), I knew I had to be there. What I didn’t expect, though, is how moved I’d be.
From the first notes of ‘The Greatest,’ my eyes started watering, and when Chan started gesturing to an invisible inner child by her side near the end of the song, I knew I was in trouble. She sang the whole album, which, of course, sent every memory of listening to that record and others flooding back: every stupid 20-year-old longing and ache, every face attached to every lyric, twenty years of crud and grime washed off of me by Chan’s hypnotic voice. It always gave me chills to hear it, no matter what she was saying, but something about listening to it there and then opened the flood gates. By the time she got to the closer, her cover of ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ sung in a gut-wrenching manner not even captured in the original recording, the tears were streaming down my face. I didn’t really know why by that point. I just knew I needed it.
I later wondered if it was the event’s unique vibe that got to me. All the kids hanging on to their parents, all the aging fans around me looking just as tired as I felt and just as grateful. I wanted to communicate that in this video. The clips I included were recorded on an old digicam that I added even more compression to. I wanted to evoke the sort of footage I might have recorded had I been to one of Chan’s concerts all those years ago.