Last night Liz Phair played the first of two sold out shows at the Hiro Ballroom here in NYC and I was fortunate enough to attend last night’s show. Because my ticket came thru at the last minute (thanks Tito!), I wasn’t able to secure a plus one ticket but there was no way I wanted to miss last night’s show. Liz Phair is doing a very short tour (only 3 cities) in support of the 15th anniversary redux version of her amazing debut album Exile In Guyville. On Monday she played San Francisco, CA, on Tuesday she played her hometown of Chicago, IL and last night/tonight she plays NYC. Here are a few of my pics from last night’s show:

Liz was in fine form last night. I’ve been lucky enough to see her a few times on tour (in Detroit, Toronto, Grand Rapids) but never in such an intimate setting as last night’s concert. The Hiro Ballroom is tiny and the stage was practically in the middle of the audience … pretty much everyone in the place was close enough to reach out and touch Liz on stage. I loved every second of her performance. She played all 18 of the songs on Exile in Guyville and an extra encore set of 3 extra songs, one of which was a new as-yet untitled song. After the jump, check out more pictures from last night’s show, the full set-list, some of Liz‘s quotes from the stage and a video of her new, untitled song …

Here are a few more pics from the show last night … among them, a picture of Liz cutting her nails on stage and a pic from her duet with an audience member for the song Flower:

And here is the full set list from last night’s show:

6’1″
Help Me Mary
Glory
Dance Of The Seven Veils
Never Said
Soap Star Joe
Explain It To Me
Canary
Mesmerizing
Fuck And Run
Girls! Girls! Girls!
Divorce Song
Shatter
Flower
Johnny Sunshine
Gunshy
Stratford-On-Guy
Strange Loop

Encore

Chopsticks – solo on keyboard
Untitled new song – solo on guitar
Polyester Bride – solo on guitar

After Help Me Mary Liz said “you guys are great … it’s an energy lovefest in here.” After Dance of the Seven Veils she said, “I knew this was gonna be my fucking favorite show.” She dedicated Explain It To Me to someone she hoped was in the crowd saying, “Nash if you’re out there, I’m gonna dedicate this song to you.” She actually cut her nails on stage with clippers after she performed Mesmerizing (saying that she knew she wasn’t going to get away without cutting them on this tour). After Fuck and Run she confessed, “I was so fucking scared to do these shows … I was 18!“ After Shatter she introduced the members of her band — Greg (on guitar), Dan (on bass) and Nick (on drums). She gave their last names but I failed to make note of them. Then she called out for Blake Freedman to join her on stage and the two of them performed Flower together. Right before Strange Loop she wished everyone a “Happy 15th birthday” and then continued by saying, “Not to piss off every other city but I always felt that Guyville was a New York record. It’s great to see everyone singing along.”

For the encore, Liz told us that she was “unprepared” to do an encore and then told a story about seeing Nicole Richie on The View performing a bit of a song on the piano … then she went right into performing her song Chopsticks solo on the keyboard. Then she played a new untitled song and ended the night with Polyester Bride. Here is video I shot of Liz performing her new song:

The whole show was just awesome. I’m actually going back tonight to see the second show with my friend Marissa. I expect that the show won’t be at all different from last night’s show but it’ll be a treat to see her do it all over again. I have to give a shout out to Pink readers Alex, Derek and Laura who I met and got to hang out with at the show last night and give thanks and love to Tito for hooking me up with a ticket for the show :)