Maturing Morissette Blends the Personal, Universal

An idealistic man spoke to a Los Angeles crowd Thursday night with a message of hope and unity, then turned to a camera and addressed a global audience, asking each person watching to do one thing--hug whoever was next to them.

It wasn’t something you missed in Al Gore’s speech at the Democratic National Convention. It was Nick Galvan, 18, one of about 300 Alanis Morissette fans attending a warmly affecting acoustic performance by the singer-songwriter at the Museum of Tolerance. The concert was augmented by a video presentation and question-and-answer session about her recent tour to places usually bypassed by major rock artists.

With some tickets to this unique, intimate evening having been auctioned on the Internet to benefit the museum’s education fund and the youth-organizer Active Element Foundation, fans came from across the U.S. and as far away as Argentina to see Morissette.

That fit with the theme of the event, which will be Webcast via https://www.alanis.z.com on Sept. 12. It capped a tour Morissette and her band made to such Middle Eastern and European locales as Istanbul, Beirut and the small town of Pula on the Adriatic coast of Croatia.

Dubbed “The One Tour,” the trek also featured another unique angle. In each of the 11 cities along the way, Morissette was hosted by an “ambassador” she selected from local fans who had submitted essays about themselves and their hometowns.

With her guides, she not only explored the daily life of these towns, but also exchanged views on local politics and religion--not the kind of things afforded by the usual concert tour itinerary, in which artists see little besides their hotel rooms and the concert venues. Lively personal video journals of each adventure can also be viewed on the Morissette Web site.

“I wanted to go to cities where they don’t necessarily have a lot of big acts play,” Morissette explained in her dressing room before Thursday’s presentation. “I wanted to show simply by going that they’re as worthy of being entertained as anyone.”

The evening began with a video showing fans in different countries singing along with Morissette on the song “Ironic,” all with equal fervor regardless of native language, politics or religion.

That, she said backstage, was exactly the point of the whole venture.

“It reaffirms everything I feel about a thread of continuity in the world,” she said. “The political is the personal and the universal [experiences] are personal. Everything comes down to personal relations and contact.”

Morissette added that these experiences will be reflected in her next album, though she’s not sure in what way. Her performances Thursday perhaps contained some hints, with a maturing sense of comfort and richness in her presence and in her five-man band’s sparkling, jazzy-folky reworkings of songs mostly drawn from her 1998 album, “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie”--itself a reflection of her experiences in India that helped her cope with the sudden fame that came from her huge 1995 hit album, “Jagged Little Pill.”

Avoiding the biggest hits save for 1998’s “Thank You,” Morissette focused on songs expressing the kind of personal and universal connections experienced on the recent trip--the prayer-like admission of frailty in “Can’t Not,” the craving for interpersonal connection in “I Was Hoping.”

It was just the right setting for a group hug.