Thrill 4-11: Things to do Before I Die {Witness}

My friends, I have a dream...

Tori Amos is performing in a venue that holds a lot of people. It's full. On this tour (or maybe just for this one-off concert) she has a band with her. But more importantly, she has backing singers. At least three. Got that in your mind? Good...

My dream is that Witness is the final song of the night and it goes for around 10 minutes.

If I knew that was going to happen, I might spend quite a lot of money to be there at that concert. I can absolutely see the entire crowd on their feet screaming and clapping at the end, although I would hope people would be on their feet well before the end.

My enjoyment of this song seems to be at a peak at the moment, but even when I'm not in the mood for it so much I always think I would love to hear it live. It has such potential to be a really huge song live, given the right forces behind it. And I think it would really benefit from the extra length a live performance often brings. It might seem bizarre to consider a 6-minute song to be too short, but that's exactly what Witness is to me: a song that's cut off in its prime. The final return of the faster section doesn't last nearly long enough to re-establish the fantastic groove that the song began with.

I rather resented the slower part of the song at first. It seemed to me that the introduction of the piano, which for a few bars looks like it's going to take the song to even greater heights, proves to be a betrayal as everything comes to an abrupt halt. However, now that I'm used to it the change in tempo seems perfectly judged and just another aspect of the authentic gospel flavour. It's the failure to let the faster tempo really get going again - so that the slower part is overridden in the mind - that's the 'problem'.

It's not much of a problem, as right now I love the song right up to its close, but I think I could go completely nuts about this song if it didn't leave me wanting more.

I can't overemphasise how unusual it is for me to feel this way. I'm generally very attached to good studio recordings, where it's possible to plan carefully and add details, and rather sceptical about live performances that have the potential to be sprawling, messy and over-indulgent.

Witness can sprawl all it damn well wants. It can lounge all over the furniture and not clean up after itself, and I won't mind, so long as it gets me and everybody else in the room up and dancing.