Singer/songwriter Tori Amos pledged Monday that her upcoming tour with

Alanis Morissette would channel the extreme emotions of last month's

riotous Woodstock '99 festival into a positive arena.

"People are into tearing things up. ... I'd rather be loving it up with

somebody," she said during her "Tori Amos: Live and Unrehearsed"

webcast. "[Our tour] is about yeah. It's about hot."

With 15 radio-contest winners and their guests flopped about on plush

sofas or lying on the floor, Amos performed a seven-song set that included the new

tracks "Bliss" and "A Thousand Oceans," as well as crowd favorites and

B-sides.

During "Bliss," synth percussion throbbed in the background as the

chorus athletically built to a crescendo. The song, released as a

downloadable track on the Internet last week, is the first single from

Amos' upcoming fifth album, to venus and back (Sept. 21). The set

includes one CD of new studio songs and a second disc of live material

recorded on tour for last year's from the choirgirl hotel.

Amos later said the first line of "Bliss" — "Father, I killed my

monkey" — was inspired by Clunky the Monkey, an imaginary childhood

friend who also made an appearance in the song "Marianne," from Boys

for Pele (1996).

She performed the album's second, gentler single, "A Thousand Oceans,"

unaccompanied at the piano. Amos, who turns 36 Sunday, said she created

American and European videos for the track, the latter of which features

a lesbian kissing scene excised from the U.S. version.

Amy Webb, a 22-year-old fan who watched the webcast from her home in

Charlotte, N.C., said she appreciated the electronic textures of "Bliss"

more than the traditional sounds of "A Thousand Oceans."

"I know there's some old fans who aren't gonna morph with it, but I

applaud her changing and not being static," Webb said. "It's not

necessarily modern, but it's experimental."

The 75-minute event was as informal as it was intimate. Some fans lay on

their stomachs, heads resting in their hands, as if watching Amos on

their living room TV. For "Merman," a song from the recent Kosovo

refugee benefit album No Boundaries, Amos had the lyrics scrawled

on her hands.

Clad in an olive top and jeans, she sat between an electronic keyboard

and grand piano, often stretching her legs out behind her or tossing her

head toward the ceiling as she played. Between songs, she answered

questions submitted online by fans and from VJ John Norris of MTV, which

co-sponsored the webcast with SonicNet.

Amos said her "5 1/2 Weeks" tour with Morissette, which starts Wednesday

in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., will highlight the differences

rather than the similarities between the two impassioned performers. She

said the two have no plans to perform together on the nationwide outing,

which wraps up with shows Sept. 25 and 26 in Laguna Hills, Calif.

"If you come wanting it to be a battle, I'm not going to engage in

that," said Amos, who will follow the tour with two weeks of solo dates.

Before Amos earned national attention in the early 1990s with such

emotionally charged songs as "Crucify" (

href="http://media.addict.com/music/Amos,_Tori/Crucify.ram">RealAudio

excerpt) and "Me and a Gun" (

href="http://media.addict.com/music/Amos,_Tori/Me_And_A_Gun.ram">

RealAudio excerpt), she played in the little-known Los Angeles glam band Y

Kant Tori Read. On Monday, she sang "Glory of the '80s," a new song

presumably about her stint in the group, with the opening lyric "I took

a taxi from L.A. to Venus in 1985."

Amos, who in 1994 founded the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network

crisis hotline, called the rapes that allegedly took place at Woodstock

'99 last month in Rome, N.Y., a "tragedy."

New York State Police say they are investigating eight sex crimes linked

to the July 23–25 festival in Rome, N.Y., five of which have been

classified as rapes. They also made arrests in two other alleged sexual

assaults said to have occurred during the event.

Although Amos was not at Woodstock, she blamed the arson, looting and

vandalism that closed the show on bands making angry, aggressive music,

and also on overpriced concessions.

"There's a lot of hate music out there," she said, adding later, "[But]

you charge five bucks for a hot dog and all hell's gonna break loose."