Never scared

[koganbot]

During the opening acts, I spent a lot of mental energy trying to figure out who the apparent celebrity was in my section, a young redheaded woman who people kept flocking to for autographs and photos. During the "small club" portion of the show, her identity was revealed: Swift's friend Abigail, the one she wrote the song "Fifteen" about ("Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind / we both cried"). She and her friends had front-row seats for the smaller stage, where Swift sang directly to Abigail the song she wrote about her.
--Dave Heaton, from a fascinating account in Pop Matters of a Taylor Swift show, watching her work the crowd and also work the theme of dreams versus reality, of perfection (what her voice isn't) versus emotional effect (her actual singing).

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

That is a fantastic article. Who is Dave Heaton and how can we rope him into our convos, too?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Well, I left a cursory "good job" comment there -- I'm guessing if you leave something he'll respond there or here.

[koganbot]

Well, he's already involved in some of our convos, in that he posts on Rolling Country, using the moniker erasingclouds.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Ah, OK -- didn't know his ILMoniker.

Anarchy in the KU

[koganbot]

Abigail playing drums, accompanying Taylor.

Abigail goes to the University of Kansas, which is probably why she was able to get to the concert that Dave saw. (Articles keep referring to the university as Kansas University or KU, which confused me, but apparently Kansas University is an accepted synonym for University of Kansas; it's even referred to as KU on the University of Kansas website, http://www.ku.edu, maybe to distinguish it from the University of Kentucky, or that island nation near Europe.) I gathered from an interview that Abigail has gone along with Taylor on tour at times, but that whenever they've intended to recently the plan fell apart, Abigail being on the swim team and needing to participate in summer events.