Welcome to Sunny Florida

A bit of a mixed bag, but more good than bad.

On the plus side, the concert sounds very good, the mix holding up to even a lot of volume. A great set of songs, and some interesting interview snippets. On the less great side "Professional Widow" is unaccountably censored, the volume suddenly dipped on 'offensive words'. Very weird, since elsewhere profanity and sexual references survive intact. But this song, which otherwise arguably would have been the highlight of the concert, is rendered powerless by the odd and distracting cover-over of the words (and hard edge) that are the point of the song. Better to leave the song off entirely than include this version with its teeth removed.

Also, Tori seems less expressive and emotional on a number of songs then I've seen before or since. Maybe the end of a long, exhausting tour. On the other, other hand, the 6 song EP is a terrific extra, worth the price of admission alone, especially considering how cheap you can pick this up used.

"Welcome To Sunny Florida" is actually really good if you mostly care about the music. The extra material on this DVD is also very good, it has full length interviews with Tori and with her mother, too, and it has a tour yearbook, no complaints there. But what is really surprisingly bad here is the camera work. I'm not a perfectionist and I don't expect every moment captured to be perfectly in focus. But here the picture is out of focus a lot, sometimes there are very strange cuts and at some point it simply starts being annoying. This is why, despite the great music and the interesting extras, I "only" gave this 7 out of 10.

Tori Amos gives off heat for a few hours as she straddles her piano bench letting her fingers do some rather exceptional walking across the ivory field of her shiny Bossendorfer piano. There's likely to be a moment of initial head scratching while you ponder the absence of a guitar in during the concert, but Amos' talent on the piano and her distinctive, sultry vocals soon prove that sometimes less is way, way more. I'm not convinced the Tori Team gave it their best shot when it comes to camera work though. It seems as if in an attempt to not ruin the intimacy of the experience for the live audience, a little of the class had been sacrificed for the home viewer. With 18 tracks, both well known and obscure, performed on stage, there's definite value for money. Plus there's a free CD with it so what's no to love? The red-headed wailer does a good job keeping ears perked and eyes on the screen for the duration of the show.