Steely Dan @ B.E.C./Kathy Griffin @ Music Box

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on May 28th, 2007

What better way to spend the night off than to see Steely Dan in a venue that holds 3,000, then hop downstairs and see Kathy Griffin do a second sold-out show at the 900-seat Music Box?

On the way out of the Borgata Event Center, we obtained a set list from the sound dude. Would have been nice to have heard “Chain Lightning” or “Razor Boy,” but when the artists have released seven platinum albums, and they’re only performing for 90 minutes or so, there’s bound to be some favorites left out.

Jeri (Instrumental)
Time Out Of Mind
Godwhacker
Bad Sneakers
Two Against Nature
Hey Nineteen
Haitian Divorce
Peg
Babylon Sisters
I Got The News
Dirty Work
Josie
Aja
FM
Kid Charlemagne
____(Encore)____
Pretzel Logic
Bodhisattva
Carolyn(Instrumental)

Griffin did an hour and twenty. And, like she says, we “picked a good week” to see her. She had a ringside seat for the Rosie O/The View fireworks. And she attended the American Idol Final (but not the results show). As long as she is invited to/bullies her way into “important” pop culture events, she’ll have plenty of fodder for her live shows. Her first-person accounts of her brushes with greatness are vicious, often borderline slanderous and raucous. She has many antecedents– Joan Rivers, Truman Capote, Dorothy Parker, Orson Bean– but she has carved out a niche and made it exclusively hers.