Ani DiFranco

This one's a little different from most of the shows on this site. I wasn't there as a fan with a ticket — I worked it. At the time I was with DiCesare-Engler, the long-running Pittsburgh concert promoter, under my boss Brian Drusky. This was the second Ani DiFranco show I'd worked for D&E. The first had been a smaller affair at the IC Light Amphitheater down at Station Square. By May of '99, she had clearly outgrown that.

The venue was the A.J. Palumbo Center, the fieldhouse on the Duquesne University campus, and the place was absolutely packed. Ani was one of those artists who, on paper, should have been a college and underground favorite — fiercely independent, on her own Righteous Babe label, no major-label machine behind her. But she had built something bigger than that. Watching the crowd file in — almost entirely young women, college-age, devoted in a way you don't see every night — drove home just how much of a movement she was at that moment. You could feel it from the load-in onward.

The setlist was a strong cross-section of where she was in her catalog right then. She was touring behind Up Up Up Up Up Up, which had come out earlier in the year, so "Angry Anymore," "Jukebox," "Virtue," and "Everest" were all in rotation. Material from Little Plastic Castle showed up too — the title track, "Fuel," "Two Little Girls," "Pulse" territory. Older favorites like "Anticipate," "Shy," "Cradle and All," "My I.Q.," and "Letter to a John" kept the longtime fans happy. Eighteen songs, no opener listed, just Ani.

Working a show is a very different vantage point than attending one. You don't get to enjoy it the same way — you're tracking the load-in, the crew, the crowd flow, watching for problems. But you also get to see the machinery up close, and on a night like this, with an artist that connected to her audience in the way Ani did, the energy in the building was something even the staff couldn't ignore. A memorable one to have on the resume.