Actually, I kinda enjoy Deborah's music when it's on a CD, but I quite enjoyed the one time I caught her live. The difference was that she grabbed and engaged the audience with the stories she told between and around the songs. This is the same thing that others have said above -- it doesn't matter so much how long your "intro" is, as long as you realize that it is part of the performance and should be scripted, practiced, and performed just as carefully as the rest of the set. (If you've had a bad experience at Deborah's live performances, then either you like her music better than I, or you don't like story-telling as much, or she was having a bad day. I'm a harpist myself, so I've got nothing against her music -- though I'm not as much into the concert-harp/jazz repertoire -- and I've got a lot against *bad* story-tellers -- which she definitely isn't -- so it's all going to be relative.)
(no subject)