Matt Chamberlain spoke to PopMatters and offered some insights regarding how Tori’s songs change in the live show, from tour to tour: “I think a lot of times what happens, especially with Tori, is that between the last time we played and the time we’re planning a [new] song, she’s maybe done a tour by herself and has made a different arrangement of the song and she doesn’t exactly remember the original. We’ll play the original and sometimes she’ll go ‘wow, I don’t remember what I played. Maybe we should listen to the record’. So, we’ll listen to the record and then she’ll try and copy that, but it will morph again into something else.“
Of our pick for the most riveting live variation of “Pancake”. the 2003 On Scarlet’s Walk Tour version with an “Ohio” bridge courtesy of Neil Young, Chamberlain recalls that Amos “really liked that one [and wanted to] just to change it up”. The delivery of this section of the song is one of Tori’s most powerful, committed live vocal performances. That same year, Tori played the song solo, and it didn’t lose an ounce of intensity. In 2007, portraying the character of “Tori”, she again re-invented “Pancake” as a full-on rock song, complete with an assertive electric guitar layer added to an even more amped up original trio arrangement for piano, bass and drums.
1. “Pancake” with Neil Young Ohio bridge, On Scarlet’s Walk Tour 2003
2. “Pancake”, solo, 2003
3. “Pancake”, American Doll Posse Tour 2007