Grade: A-
Ball State had an offering of "Cake and Pie" Wednesday night when Lisa Loeb performed in the Student Center Ballroom.
The crowd ate up with satisfaction.
Only 500 students were permitted into the show, and at about 7 p.m., nearly half an hour before the doors opened, the line stretched nearly the entire length of the Student Center. Some near the ballroom entrance were even seated in chairs.
Loeb stopped in Muncie as part of the Zilo Lotus Tour, sponsored by Depo-Provera and designed to promote the strength of female artists. The show was the lost stop for the singer.
"The good news is we had a hot artist, and the bad news is we had a hot artist," said Campbell McLaren, president of the Zilo college entertainment network.
The evening kicked off around 8 when Indiana artist Annie Hakte opened for Loeb. Only in her second major stage performance, the West Lafayette artist performed several interesting acoustic pieces, the best of which was "By the Light of the Indiana Moon," a love song about her native state.
After a 20-minute intermission, Loeb walked up to the microphone clad in a red "Hello Kitty" shirt, denim mini-skirt and fishnet stockings. The crowd immediately went wild and rushed to the foot of the stage to greet her.
Loeb started off with a rendition of her hit "Do You Sleep," and the audience gave a brief scream as she struck the first chords on her guitar.
With the relatively small numbers in attendance, the performance was quite a contrast to the typical rock concert where the show is more about the noise than the substance. Loeb even joked with the audience at one point commenting that "Free Bird" was "a song about birds."
The singer was a natural on stage, and her friendliness with the students created an intimate coffeehouse atmosphere. The mood would have been no different had she played before a dozen people rather than 500.
The audience favorite for the night seemed to be "Stay." Her breakthrough hit from the 1993 "Reality Bites" soundtrack received the loudest ovation and someone in the crowd could be heard to say, "Now I can sleep."
But her finest moments came during "Truthfully," from her 1997 "Firecracker" album. During the piece about falling in love accidentally, Loeb's voice resonated so crisply and clearly that it sounded as if a violin were resonating from within her lungs.
Loeb focused mainly about relationship themes, and during her "Falling in Love" she sang, "The time between meeting and finally leaving is sometimes called falling in love."
The singer topped off the night with the first single from her latest album "Cake and Pie," "Someone You Should Know," a piece about realizing the value of the unnoticed things in life.
"What you got is what you wanted," she said. "What you need just happens to be someone you should know."
Loeb came back for an encore performance of her hit "Sandlewood," from her 1995 album "Tails," after the crowd demanded her return.
Wednesday's performance was a delicious sampling from Loeb's recording career. The worst part was that only a few were allowed to listen to the treats.
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