Itās been awhile since Iāve done a fresh retrospective post and not a revision of an older one, and with future progress being pushed back because of tumblr fucking up my shit and making me re-do long and tedious bitsā¦
I thought Iād do a bit of a more light and a little bit silly one of the many styles that Emilieās keyboard, referred to as the harpsichord through The Asylum Era. Also, despite some shenanigans with accusations of Emilie lying about it really being a harpsichord when itās obviously not, she says as much inĀ Peekaboo Magazine in 2011:
ā¦ While I play real ones in my own home and on recordings, I travel with an electronic version that sounds pretty convincingā¦.
But keyboard it may be, it certainly wasnāt often left without theming to the set, and has gone through many iterations through various set evolutions and changes through The Asylum Era. (Here used as an umbrella term for Opheliac and Fight Like a Girl)
Though naturally I canāt just leave it atĀ āHere it is!ā and walk away. When talking about The Asylum Era, I also go into how, as the single set piece that is the true anchor, most notably in the earlier tours where the venue sizes varied heavily, and there are some where you can see how much struggle everyone went through to get as many of the set elements to fit, The Harpsichord, being an instrument that doe get use through the show, serves as an important world building set piece in many ways.Ā
As such, more than The Shadow Screens, more than even costumes or setlists, the Harpsichord is something of the perfect jumping off point for what I see being communicated about The Asylum with it.
And yet, after all that, Iām starting with Enchant, just for the contrast in the presentation of her performance, where Emilie herself was in beautiful, fantastical costumes, the band was like any other band, not dressing to fit into the fantasy concept Emilie built up around her, and as such, the keyboard is left as bare as the rest of the stage, giving more of a feel that a faerie wandered into some club and went off than the Asylum being the opposite.
As a side note though, with Emilie playing at a larger variety of venue types than she would later, she did seem to have a number of shows where a piano was available.
Though I canāt even tell you the years of most Enchant Era pictures, much less if this was part of her Acoustic Cabaret series of shows, which is why there is the difference.Ā
Opheliac Preview Concert at the Double Door
(āYeah, thatās where all the other socks goā¦ā - Myspace caption for this photo)
The Opheliac Preview concert was one before much of The Asylum world was actually developed, and thereās far more to be said about that at a later date, but some of the motifs did emerge from the earliest days, with the only set decoration being that of a line of socks held upon a clothes line across the front, even if not intentionally so, serving as a tease of where the shows would head.
Though what canāt be shown here as simply as in a photo is that from the single video we have from this show which sits in a unique place, having been a one off show, but also, from what little we have from it, some photos and one video, the spirit, even if not the aesthetic, was closer to the Enchant Era than the Opheliac era as it would develop in a key way, that as well as having Lady Joo Hee on cello, Emilie as well would play violin when physically possible, as she is seen doing in live Enchant Era performances:
The tour without an actual name on account of being more of a loose collection of festivals with a few solo dates here and there.
Now weāre getting closer to The Asylum as we know it, even if it still wasnāt developed as a larger concept yet, more of the staple elemeents have found theirĀ
Though with solo shows being the exception to festival performances where her sets were an hour long maximum, sets were still quite limited, and the keyboard was back to mostly bare, with this photo being from Frankfurt on the 24th of July 2007, one of the few solo shows which allowed for more freedom to decorate than a festival where they had often 45 minutes only.
I almost feel bad giving you what I see as a required the road to get here, but The Asylum Tour of December 2009 was when Emilieās shows as we knew them took shape which include our friend The Harpsichord in all her conspicuous clutter glory:
And because weāre at the point where The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls had been written, I can actually refer to it, because this iteration of The Harpsichord, more than any other feels like the liberated inmates raided the room of treasures left for their comfort and kept from them, and proceeded to do as any Victorian would when given access to things, just put it everywhere because you have them and they need to be seen and admired, even if in a more Asylum way.
And Iām aware that yes, I might be reading more into this than Emilie might have intended which might have just been having it be intricate and beautiful to build the mood of a world that the audience wouldnāt be familiar with yet, but it is fun to overthink little things like that.
There might be a perfect shot of The Harpsichord from this set, unobstructed and showing how sometimes venues have elements that can actually add to the show, and not be the venue logo poking out, but also, design wise, itās mostly unchanged, as you can see here, itās been added onto between tours, but I canāt help showing it in full context, with Emilie playing Asleep or Mad Girl, with the Crumpets sitting around her, to more show why these set elements were so important.
When talking about Enchant, I described that Emilie looked more like a faerie whoās been displaced, where by this point, weāre the ones being brought into theirs for the evening.
Itās time for my favorite parts of these types of posts, the ones where I do get to goĀ āYep. There is it. I said all the analysis I can give, so BEHOLDāĀ
While the whole concept I maybe overthought above still hold though, starting with The Gate Tour in Autumn 2008, the shows went through a massive shift in tone, and a more subtle, but still somewhat there shift in set design, less sparkle, but still all the stylish clutter! And Suffer the Third would live his life back there unlike Suffers One and Two who would be hung upon the middle mic stand during Best Safety Lies in Fear, for his own safety, Emilieās violin is being held on it now, giving it a better place of prominence on the set.
Though for the most part the picture says the difference.
The best head on photo of The Gate IIās harpsichord features Emilie giving the same expression when all I can say is, yeah, we got some differences, but itās still the same vibe as the last where the best Asylum Analysis I could give is that itās less using the fancy things that were in the treasure room they were supported by in however many years between the Tea Party Massacre and the collapse, and thatās again more just because the shows had a different overall vibe where something a bit more stylish but a little more grunge fits.
But also, thereās going to be a trend moving forward that I canāt give any explanation other than a Doyalist one.
So itās been a bit more simplified, though the level of decoration does seem to vary from show to show, which brings me to why you might think Iām going to be disparaging of this choice, but also most shows had one night after the next, with limited set up and break down times, the choice makes sense, from a practical standpoint.
Also because weāre getting to the point where Iāve said the important bits about the importance of set itās just likeĀ āBEYOND A THING!ā so I merged all legs of the Key Tour together but hereās what you need to know
- The first leg had less bones, and a black backdrop
- The European and Australian legs removed the cobweb overway.
The Door TourĀ
(South American Tour)
I donāt even need a full picture here, but while the first part of the Asylum Era was about fictional story, this part continues with the story in question being one of logistics.Ā
The logistical issue in question being that the South American Tour required them to fly between every single stop, something the had to do earlier that year with Australia, which had the advantage of coming directly out of the longer European Tour, but Emilieās explained that bringing anything more than was absolutely necessary just was not feasible.
And seriously, we had drama about Emilie trying to claim that she was calling it a harpsichord as a lie and not because it fit into the fiction? In others you can see the sides here itās just in the open.
The Door Tour
North American Tour
Thereās always going to be a part of me thatās curious as to what Emilie, as a show opener for Gary Numan would have done, or what this tour would have looked like if it wasnāt delayed for Emilieās first jaw surgery, because the South American leg made Emilie come to a conclusion that the shows did still work when there wasnāt so much of a set, so how this reflected in our now good friend The Harpsichord:
We have returned to having decor, as being a tour on a bus itās possible, but the simplification is quite obvious, and I bet some of you who saw the gushing earlier think Iām going to just rip into this.Ā
Plot twist! Itās not that bad, my only issue is that I would have rathered a plain asylum stripe backing without the logo. Though, with the audiences actually at the show, she wasnāt wrong, and I could write a whole essay on why Emilieās shows worked as well as they did, but this is ostensibly about a Dandy of a Keyboard.
It also stayed for the most part this way through the first Fight Like a Girl tour, with variations on the drapes, sometimes having two one in red one in black, but it varied between shows, and when the concept is the same you get the one picture
And hereās how it would be at the end, and I get to return to the fun part of this post: analysing design choices.
The Fight Like a Girl II Tour features the biggest departure in itās set design overall, removing the shadow screen after six years of it being a staple design element, and as is fitting for Fight Like a Girl, fits more within the main part of the book, and the stage matches this.
And unlike the speculation, this is a concept Iāve asked Emilie about and that the show opening with the title song and Time for Tea, and then going back, and that I read it as Emily and the other inmates telling the audience what had happened, or Emily processing prior events to herself, and while neither was what she intended, both readings did get a very excited EA stamp of approval, and without a word of god to say what the intention was, that make the much more dark and bleak look to the show make more sense, we havenāt gotten to the point where theyāve fully made The Asylum into a home yet as the tours started, which is a bit odd if you think about it too hard.
I unfortunately, enjoy doing that, in part because I left the first concert of Emilieās I went to in 2008, before the books release even, thinking about who it would be a great basis for a musical, and because of that tend to look at design choices in that lense.
Itāll be a fun quick posts I tell myself, it wonāt take three hours out of my life that could be better spent, I tell myself.
I need to remember why I put long form posts like this on the backburner until Iām done with the rest of the site.
