I WAS THERE where and when it happened! I watched the first leg of Alanis Morissette’s 2-month solo tour in the North America to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of her phenomenal album "Jagged Little Pill". The venue was at the Wang Center in the heart of Boston last June 17. She promised a special tour that is strictly personal and intimately acoustic and she more than delivered it!
We paid a total of $75.00 each for the tickets ($69.50 base price plus tax and $3.00 facility fee!). It was a little more than what I wanted to pay for a concert BUT this was an Alanis concert afterall! She mesmerized, impressed, captivated an SRO crowd of more than two thousand! It was such a great evening! It started as a bummer for me as my boyfriend and I arrived late for Jason Mraz! He was the front act and he started promptly at 8pm. We arrived there barely hearing his last song for the night! 
Then Alanis came onstage after a 15 minute break and the crowd just went wild. She was wearing a simple black tank top and black pants with light make up and believe it or not, she was wearing bangs!! If she wasn’t Alanis, she couldn’t have gotten away with very short bangs like that! Another bummer was cameras were not allowed inside the theater! I had to make do with my 3650 Nokia phone and of course all I got were lousy long shots and 9 second video clippings! Sigh. I just have to think of that night while listening to the "Jagged Little Pill (JPL) Acoustic" album I bought from the concert.
For Alanis fans, as you know JPL first came out 10 years ago on June 13th. Now last June 13, 2005 she released JPL Acoustic with all the songs intact and in the same order as the first album. This time though, she’s more subdued. The years has mellowed her down. She’s not angry anymore but she still speaks of pain and hurts and truthts. What’s amazing in the album is the lyrics’ timelessness. A decade old of songs and the youth of today still knows her and sings her songs!
A decade made Alanis tougher, sensible and mature. Brave enough to stand up to insert a political stand on the song that made her a household name. If you listen closely to the lyrics of "Ironic" in the JPL Acoustic she changed one word and hopes it makes all the difference. "It’s meeting the man of my dreams, then meeting his beautiful husband." In the original version, she sang: "It’s meeting the man of my dreams, then meeting his beautiful wife." She said that she has a lot of homosexual friends and its a way of acknowledging their presence in the society- that they too are free to do whatever they want and all, even marry! You’ll know the implications of that one word. Will the conservatives react?! I shouldn’t think so.
So Alanis is back! She has a lot going for her. She’s engaged to actor Ryan Reynolds. She is the new endorser for the Gap Clothing Company who also recently signed in Pop/R&B British sensation Joss Stone as Gap Model; and her JPL Acoustic is making well in the US market, never mind if other music stores are mad at her for making an exclusive contract with Starbucks for the album release in the US. The JPL album will be available worldwide in stores everywhere on July 26.
Grab a copy! I assure you, it’s worth every penny!
