Got out of Cardiff by 9.30 and was on the road again. I have got to say that I was glad to get out of South Wales, it really did seem pretty desperate this time around and it really is quite incredible how ugly it has become both in terms of the people who live there and the places they inhabit. Cardiff Bay is a monstrosity that is going to end up being a hellish place to live in there is little doubt about that.
I then had all day to get down to Bournemouth so I took the back roads rather than the boring motorways and ended up taking 4 or 5 hours to hit the south coast. Drove south of Bristol and down through the Cheddar Gorge which I had never been to before and which was far smaller than I had imagined but nevertheless really impressive, in fact I have to say that it was nothing like what I had expected. Most beautiful things turn out to be smaller than you anticipate and therefore that much more perfect. The only problem with Cheddar Gorge was I didn’t realise just how much it has been turned into a tourist attraction by the good people of Cheddar, and the bottom of the gorge was chock full of the usual mob of fat arsed oldies you see everywhere these days god bless ‘em, eating their ice creams and waiting for the chip shop to open.
After driving slowly up the Gorge I took a combination of A and B roads through Somerset and Dorset to get to Bournemouth by around 2.30pm. Some of the roads were a bit slow going but some of them were also gloriously empty. Gotta say that the Dorset countryside that I drove through was simply stunning, some of the best I have seen in the whole of the country and I’m not surprised the locals want to keep quiet about it and not let the mob in. There must some fantastic places to visit there if you know what is what and are blessed with a bit of local knowledge. The weather helped; it was a gloriously sunny late June afternoon, warm and breeze coming in from the sea in the far distance. Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall has really got it made having his River Cottage HQ based in Dorset that’s for sure.
Showtime was not until 7.30 in the evening and that meant I had a good few hours to kill before joining the queue so I went for a long walk on the glorious beaches that make Bournemouth such a big attraction in the summer. There were plenty of people around and quite a few swimmers in the sea which looked pretty cold to me. During the course of the walk and looking around at all the people so clearly enjoying themselves in the sun I thought about how it all could be over in the flash of an eye for all of us and that there would be no guarantee we would get to enjoy such leisure again for an awful long time. How many of us really appreciate that fact is open to discussion however and it is as much as I can do to keep it mind for any sustained period of time I must admit.
Bob was in the mix tonight, really in the mix. This was a much better show than Cardiff despite the fact that there were only four songs different from the night before which according to my understanding of Bob’s song rotation is a low figure. However after looking at the set lists so far on this European Summer tour it does appear that Bob is keeping a more or less structured set and only changing a few rather than most of the numbers from night to night. It might have something to do with the fact that he is playing the keyboards now and needs more regularity in terms of the material he chooses in order to play along and in the midst of it break into something new depending on how the rendition might be progressing. There is also the fact that the songs can change so much in terms of performance from night to night, and in this respect I was actually pleased to get the chance to hear a lot of the songs again because they sounded in the main much clearer and sharper than they had the night before in Cardiff. It was only by listening, for example, to his new versions of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee and Maggie’s Farm for a second time that I was able to truly appreciate them rather than dismiss them and thus close my ears to what is actually going on and what is actually going on is a constant evolution. Bob often takes the form of conductor these days and the band perform according to his direction. The sound he gets from keyboard is a kind of organ wheeze that reminds me fairgrounds that was somehow distinctly appropriate when heard in a seaside town such as Bournemouth, a comfotable resort on the south coast of England. .
There was also the fact that is not to be underestimated that the crowd in Bournemouth was a hell of a lot more civilised that the one in Cardiff where a good proportion of the audience simply saw the fact that Bob was in town as a perfect excuse to go and get absolutely hammered. Bleak. The vibe in Bournemouth was a much better one, not so desperate, and as a consequence I was more than happy to stand there for nearly four hours without ever having much thought of shifting from my spot which I guess was around 8 or 10 rows from the front. Apart from getting as close as possible to Bob I really cannot see the point of queuing for hours and hours in order to be right at the front. You might get up and close and personal to the great man although in truth that is impossible but you miss out on the quality of the sound as you are then in front of the speaker stacks that are suspended from the ceiling, and those faithful speaker stacks can make all the difference .
The night before in Cardiff I had actually done something at a Bob show that I had never done before and that was abandon my position just before Summer Days the final song of the main set and go off and get a pint of lager. Believe me I would have only done that if I really felt like I had needed one. Consequently by the time I got back in the hall with my cold plastic glass of Carlsberg, Bob and the boys were coming to the end of Like a Rolling Stone the first number of their two song encore. From a distance Bob and the boys in Cardiff had appeared to me to be distinctly unimpressive by the end of the night but now in Bournemouth it was a different kettle of fish altogether and my faith was well and truly restored. Bob’s singing was clear and at times truly excellent and his movements were sharp. As I explained before the complexity of the music also demanded more than one listen and that was why I was glad to get a second opportunity to hear again 11 out of the 15 songs that comprised his set, including the standard encore songs Like a Rolling Stone and All Along the Watchtower which in Bournemouth sounded totally transformed from the night before, courtesy of the ultimate shape shifter.
The drive home from Bournemouth back to London was much more tiring than I had anticipated and by the time I pulled my Toyota into the drive it was gone 12.30 am and I was dog tired. In retrospect I think this is going to be the last time that I go out on the road to see Bob for a long, long time. I have now seen him 28 times in the 13 years since I first saw him in 1993. If and when he plays some shows in London again it will be great to see him for a night or maybe two but I don’t think I am going to be able to dedicate so much time and money to him in the same way that I have on many occasions since 1993. It’s been good while it lasted but I don’t want to become sad enough and oblivious enough to the rest of what life has to offer to spend up to six hours or more queuing up to see him when there is a glorious day out there waiting to be experienced.
No comments:
Post a Comment