Twenty-one top 40 hits and seven #1 singles. How many artists could pack that many hits into a set list\u2026 with every one being a song they wrote? That list is a very short one, and it starts with Carole King.<\/p>\n
King, who started out as a teenager in the late 50s writing songs in the iconic Brill Building alongside Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and husband-to-be Gerry Goffin, has toured only intermittently over the years. A few years back she did a series of \u201cliving room concerts\u201d in which she would literally sit down at someone\u2019s piano in their home and sing for a couple of hours, chatting with her audience in between songs.<\/p>\n
Her subsequent Welcome To My Living Room<\/i> tour, chronicled on this lovingly assembled DVD, attempts to transfer that cozy atmosphere to a community theater-sized venue seating perhaps 2,000 people. What\u2019s surprising is how well it comes off, even if the sofa and side table props that dress the stage do seem a bit goofy at first.<\/p>\n
King is in her 60s now but her voice and energy and stage presence are strong as ever. She looks great and sings even better, and her between-song patter from her piano stool is both warm and informative. Accompaniment is minimal — Rudy Guess on guitar, bass and backing vocals, and Gary Burr on guitar, bass and vocals, including a couple of duets with King, who generously hands things off to him to take a lead vocal on one of his own compositions.<\/p>\n
The set list is perhaps a bit slow to catch fire — King packs the front end of the show with lesser-known and more recent compositions — but once she gets to the Gilmore Girls<\/i> theme song (\u201cWhere You Lead, I Will Follow\u201d), the pace picks up. Soon after, \u201cBeen To Canaan\u201d features sweet harmonies between King and Burr, who team up again for a rousing version of his own single-composed-for-someone-else \u201cLove\u2019s Been A Little Bit Hard On Me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then it\u2019s hit parade time as King delivers a solid \u201cSmackwater Jack\u201d before diving into a medley of songs she wrote for others, from \u201cI\u2019m Into Something Good\u201d to \u201cGo Away Little Girl\u201d and \u201cOne Fine Day\u201d and \u201cWill You Love Me Tomorrow?\u201d You only get a verse of each, but it vividly illustrates what seems to be a bottomless well of appealing pop melodies that flow from King\u2019s fingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cUp On The Roof\u201d — also a hit for longtime friend James Taylor — follows, along with \u201cIt\u2019s Too Late\u201d and a very funny intro to what is perhaps King\u2019s best-known song, \u201c(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman,\u201d which she recalls playing for a large group of U.S. servicemen who sang along to every word. You might think the hits would start to thin out after that, but you\u2019ve still got \u201cPleasant Valley Sunday,\u201d \u201cI Feel The Earth Move,\u201d Saddest-Song-Ever candidate \u201cSo Far Away\u201d and encores of \u201cYou\u2019ve Got A Friend\u201d and \u201cLocomotion\u201d to go.<\/p>\n
Special features on this DVD include a \u201cmaking-of\u201d documentary on the Living Room tour, in-studio rehearsal footage and some fun snippets from Carole and band\u2019s nightly \u201cSongwriting 101\u201d sessions, in which they would enlist the audience\u2019s help to improvise the bare bones of a song onstage in less than five minutes. <\/p>\n
Carole King is an icon among singer-songwriters and this DVD is a thoroughly engaging illustration of why. A great holiday gift for the mellow-pop lover in your living room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7703],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-40640","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-carole-king","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40640"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}