There's a whiff of money about Kasey. No, I'm not talking about how many albums she has sold (and she's sold a few). Based on her performance tonight, I'm beginning to wonder what drives what: does the money drive the music or does the music drive the money? When she generously gave her two support acts over an hour to play their music to her sold out crowd, there was a sense that it was going to be a rollicking big night of music. But then Kasey played a main set that ran for less than an hour, and after only 70 mins on stage, including the requisite encore, she called it a night. Don't get me wrong, she's very entertaining and her music is robust but it struck me as one of the shortest main sets I've seen over the past couple of years from any performer. Why did she plug her merchandising twice during the show? Why did anyone carrying a camera (ie.myself and others, including a press photographer) get hassled by venue staff, more so than I recall at other "big" shows I've seen in Melbourne (eg. Art Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris)? Why didn't she play a second encore, when there was sufficient applause after the first encore to warrant it? Throughout the show she grinned whenever the lively crowd showed their appreciation, but was she grinning at their enthusiasm or the fact that she had sold out the venue two nights in a row? I don't have the answers to any of these questions but for someone who is supposedly so passionate about music, there was something in her performance that suggested she was just going through the motions. Has she streamlined the whole Kasey Chambers sideshow to the point that more time is being devoted to the business side of things than to the music itself? These aren't questions that have ever crossed my mind before so it's disappointing that upon leaving the venue tonight, these are the questions that came to my mind.
