It is hot and I have not written much on the incredible Ghost Eternal blog for a good few weeks. In fact I guess if you read the last few entries you could say that I am still recovering from seeing Bob Dylan. Don’t think there is much more to add to that.
If people are wondering whether or not temperatures are getting hotter in the world I think we might be getting close to show time. Tomorrow is possibly going to break the record for the hottest July day ever in Britain, or at least since they started recording these things. As I sit here in the office in Ilford the temperature is low ‘90s. It is bearable but things get slow, especially time, (when the mirage of escaping the office, going home and resting in the back garden looms large on the horizon) ; it is also when you end up doing things not quite as well as you usually do because your attention is not quite there, and there is a certain level agitation buzzing around somewhere in the back of your consciousness.
Above was written over a week ago now and in a way nothing much has changed. It is still hot and looks like it is going to continue being so for the next few days at least. Each of these pieces is being written at speed in the office and I guess I will post them up onto the blog before we go to Ireland at the end of the week. Ireland. Hired a cottage in County Kerry. Never been there before so we are both looking forward to seeing how expectations dissolve into reality. How close will it be to what we imagine? Work is ticking over, not excessively busy but enough to do without making me want to freak out and think the whole thing is going to come crashing down around me. Would it be such a bad thing if it did?
London in the summer heat is heavy. Well, in London there is always that constant feeling of being on the edge of the apocalypse. It has so many places where the atmosphere and attitude of the people on the streets is such that you can almost taste it. One false move and you’re a dead man. Stuff like that. Especially over on the east side of town which is where I happen to live and work. It is an overwhelming feeling. So much so that I don’t think it will ever go away. Maybe when I was younger I would have been able to kid myself that I would rise above it, but I am at least wiser than that now and have a better grasp of my own limitations. It goes when I am not in London but that is it. When I’m here there feeling is there and it is just a question of degree, in other words sometimes I am full of it and other times not so much. Fear and trepidation.
Began to write a few notes last night bemoaning the fact I hadn’t seem to have got around after nearly 46 years on this earth of getting myself a decent hobby. You know something that I can go away and quietly work on and become a bit of an expert on whilst causing no harm to anyone. Just hasn’t come together in that regard. The two main things I do outside of work and trying to be a good husband is read books and listen to music. They can keep me going for quite a while most days but I guess there comes a point when I wish there was also something else. In fact I am reading a pretty amazing book at the moment about an English mercenary from the late 14th century. Name of the book is after the man, Hawkwood. He led such a hell of a life that it is difficult to imagine what it must have been like, it comes from out of another age, another time, no doubt about that. There is something amazing and fascinating about trying to picture what it would be ever been like to be in the same room as him. How would he have looked? What would have been his vibration? Would it be possible to sit down and have a conversation with him about life? He was a soldier of fortune simple as that and he came from Essex. He was inured to any form of discomfort and the weird thing is that he didn’t really make a name for himself until he was already past 40 which I guess for the times must have made him quite old already. Where was his turf? Italy.
So - working through this mid to late July blog. Weather today is hot and sticky, by the looks of the people on the street they are finding it pretty hard to handle. No doubt that you have to take things slowly. But all this is just a sign of things to come. Summers ain't never gonna be cold again that's for sure. If people don't understand why I will tell them to take a look at the number of vehicles on the road all pumping out their gunk and the number of planes in the sky all pumping out their gunk too. We're on a big wheel now and there is little we can do to alter its speed. Just take it as it comes and let evolution take care of the rest, as it most surely will.
Was thinking earlier today just how difficult it is for me to get a handle on my feelings, articulate them and make them explainable in some kind of sensible way. For the most part I think the conculsion is that there is simply not much to say. What am I after all? A guy in his mid-40's who has never been in a life threatening situation and who has probably never done anything in his life which has not already been done by others thousands of times before. I guess in one way though I am just glad to be alive. All you have to do is look back into the past and see that it was the exception rather than the norm not really so very long ago to ever make it past 40. Even now people are dying all over the world at all ages and at various stages of the game. So in that respect it is still great just to be player.
Had a bit of stiff neck now for the last few days. Must be related I guess to the weather and the heat which just won't go away. No that I'm complaining, I love the simplicity of the hot weather. Shorts and shirt and not much else required at least as far as I'm concerned. I like sleeping on the bed with no covers and briefly waking up at around 5 am to crawl under the sheets as by then the temperature has dropped. Awake and then asleep again, slipping in and out of dreams that carry their feeling with me throughout the day but the content of which I can never remember. Like they point either to the distant past or the distant future and situations where the truth seems more real somehow although I would never be able to explain in what way.
Writing this on the laptop ties my back up. My have something to do with my neck and with the heat but when I sit back it really hits me. Got a good cup of tea on the go and it is 4pm. After this session I will do some exercises and then go on my indoor bike and really work up a bit of sweat. Then after that the reward will be a long cold shower. So anyway this peice when it is finished will have covered a few days in the second half of July in this year of my life 2006. Come what may I will post this all up onto the incredible Ghost Eterrnal tomorrow as on Friday Tamdin and I are off to Ireland on holiday for a week. Looking forward to it, never been to Ireland so I wanna see how imagination accords with reality. Think I've written about this already at the beginning of this blog but it don't matter, it is worth repeating. Well, to me at least.
The post will will have to come from work tomorrow. That will Thursay 27th July. There will just be me and Leigh in the office as Mike is taking a long weekend. Should be OK. Work is not too much, just ticking over but there is enough to keep things busy. We're all busy working away in the background on the new website which will almost ceratainly be up and running by the middle of August. Can't help but feel pretty excited about it as in my humble opinion it is a state of the art website and it can only stand to do us favours. We will see. But the address is going to be www.wisdom-books.com and it will take over from the current one which has been how it is for about the last four years and which has served us really well. The changing sands of time. The nature of the business that we're in - which is basically selling books on Buddhism - has chnaged dramatically over the years and now it has come to this. Websites offering the best there is in design technology stuffed full of product which is on offer at reduced prices. We will do anything to survive I can assure you of that. We will get any book from anywhere and sell it on to our customers. That is what we do, simple as that. After taking our cut along the way.
Now the day after what I just wrote in the few paras above. Still hot, hotter in fact than it has been before. Like swimming through a heat soup. Can't write much now, am in the office early afternoon and my mind is blank. Too full of work.
Back on the laptop now and it is early evening time in the middle of a heavy burst of rain. Don't know if it is going to be enough to turn the heat away but we shall see. Tomorrow we're going on holiday so I guess my thoughts are now turning to that. Seems funny in a not very funny at all kind of way when I turn on the tv at the moment and see all the destruction that is being caused in the Middle East. Israel and the Lebanon. How would I feel if a bomb fell out of the sky and landed on my house? This is what is happening to people in Beirut and other cities at the moment and I can't help feeling that there is going to be a price to pay for all this. It basically seems like the West are just giving the Israelis the green light to go and get on with it and in the process a lot of people who just seem like they want to get by are seeing their lives literally blown apart. It is all down to where you are in this world. In the wrong place at the wrong time then better watch out because there is little protection.
Still a few really dark clouds on the horizon but the rain has done nothing to take away the heat. Sitting here in shorts and not much else. Came back from work and had a cold shower. What else? Got a bit of Quo on the laptop, a rather long playlist I compiled that I have called Station Quo. Pretty good name for a Quo playlist if you ask me but it will probably be lost on the vast majority of people, not that there are any people who will bother to read this. Actually I've got back into the Counting Crows again after a bit of a prolonged break and I have to say that they really are an excellent band. One of the best. I've had nearly all their studio for a while so I picked up a couple of their live ones the other and I'm very much their live interpretations of their recorded material. Remind me in a way of Dylan.
Guru Padmasambhava Invocation Hill
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Friday, July 07, 2006
Thoughts on Bob Dylan
Bob Live – Generally Good Thoughts
People who want rare songs, different songs, might be disappointed but that is probably because they are not getting the point. When the music is good it doesn’t really matter what the songs are because the music transcends those limitations; you are just in the experience of the moment and within that there are so many little things going on that it is impossible for 2 versions of the same song to ever evolve in the same way and therefore there is little danger of getting bored. That is why I think Bob does it, that is go out on the road again and again, year after year, playing to countless thousands of people across the globe. I’m sure he takes in the geography of all the places he visits but the fact is that he is centre stage when it is show time and he enjoys it like nothing else, he loves it in fact. If you wish to join him then all you have to do is go out and buy yourself a ticket to one of his shows the next time he is in town. Then if you like what you see and hear you can go and see him again. It will always be different, because he is a searcher, a seeker, a permanent wanderer of the earth, ploughing the furrow of his art, and he will never stop. Even when he gets very old and has to be helped on stage I am sure that he will still do it because like it or not the stage is Bob Dylan’s theatre of magnificence.
Wrote the above close to a canal in Hertfordshire on a baking hot Saturday afternoon in June in the middle of the 2006 World Cup. Guess you could say it is the result of a positive period of thinking about Bob and his contribution to the world. I enjoyed going to the two shows I went to last week – one in Cardiff and one in Bournemouth. I suppose I am surprised at how different they were in terms of experience despite the fact that when it came to the actual sets that were played by Bob and his band they were remarkably similar. The differences lay more in fact that of the places where the shows took place more than anything else. How rough Cardiff looked, full people worse for drink with there being almost an air of madness about the place. Bournemouth in comparison was sunny and the people were very civilised. I arrived in town with a few hours to spare so I was able to go for a long walk by sea and then sit at leisure in the park in the middle of town where a music festival was taking place, the highlight of which was a local jazz orchestra do a pretty cool version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
It is nice thinking about Bob when he is on the road and playing shows in so many different places. His life is very different to mine where I spend most of my working life cooked up in an office in Ilford. There have been countless occasions where I have gone on the Net and stared at Bob’s tour itinerary and wished that I was him; after all not only does he get to go to tons of different places but most nights he has the chance to go to a Bob Dylan show! So in some sense I live this fantasy kind of life for a few minutes each day, where I imagine how it must be for Bob to be on the road; no sooner to arrive some place than to be on the way to the next stop along the line. The number of different towns and cities that Bob must have played in particularly in Europe and North America must now be quite staggering. It is something that I imagine I would love to do, even just going away for a couple of nights in the way that I did last week still has to be classified as being some kind of big adventure for me.
There is that sense of great freedom that comes from being in a place for sometimes no more than a couple of hours and then being able to move on, possibly never to see it again. I guess in reality it is not freedom at all because the state of mind is dependent on the change of the physical environment whereas in actual fact real freedom lies in being able to stay in one place no matter how rough and ready it might be and not to let it bother you. Of course there has to be some kind of basic consideration made but as long as the place is not too dangerous or in a state of war then it should be adequate enough to support you without complaint.
That is something that Bob does not have to contend because the road is an ever-moving show as far as he is concerned. It must be easy in some way to lose yourself to it and not know your way back home. In Cardiff, which I guess I would classify as a bad night as far as seeing Bob was concerned, I think I had this sense of how Bob might in actual fact be just as lost as the rest of us. In other words he is doing what he is doing because he just can’t come up with anything else to occupy his mind. Not all the time of course but almost certainly due to the frequency he is out on the road and playing shows there must be times when he just does not want to be there, just does not want to do it. Then he is just as trapped as we all are in our own little worlds of struggle and woe when we can’t find our way to the place of inner contentment.
Bob Live – Bad Thoughts
The question that has to be asked is does Bob even know why he is doing what he is doing anymore? After experiencing the 2 UK shows that formed part of the 2006 Europe Summer Tour I have to say that the overall impression that I have of Bob at present is that he is lost, trapped within the armour of his own mythology. Here he is over in Europe yet again, barely 8 months since he was last here when he undertook an autumn extensive tour; now he is playing a whole load of European shows until the last of week of July. Then he is off back to the States for a tour through August and the first half of September. Why? Judging by the 2 performances I have just seen recently I have to ask what exactly is the point? He is playing no new material despite the fact he has Modern Times, his first album in five years out at the end of August. His fear and loathing of bootleggers puts paid to any such fanciful notions that he would delight listeners with advance previews of some of the songs on it. The songs that he currently plays are by and large crushingly predictable with virtually no chance of an obscure forgotten gem being performed. Not only that but the standard of performances has without a doubt gone down. This last fact is a combination of the individual input from Bob who is now permanently on the keyboards and the fact that his current band are really rather boring.
There is simply no getting away from the fact that the best line up Bob has had in recent years when it comes to the band was the one with Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton on guitars and Bob on guitar also, backed by the ever present Tony Garnier on bass and either Dave Kemper or George Recile on drums. Gradually most seasoned Bob watchers are beginning to realise that this is the case. Things have changed since then however with both Larry and Charlie long gone and Bob these days now on the electric piano or organ and not playing them all that well, it has to be said. Logging onto the website which carries reviews from fans of his current series of shows it is interesting and unsettling to read just how negative some of them are about Bob and his current band. People are prepared to be quite harsh in their descriptions of him…sad, pathetic, atrocious… being some of the words used. I don’t think I can remember words being used like that for a long time by his fans but they are now.
So why is he here again, presenting his material in such a way? As I said before I think it is because he has become lost. Bob has toured and played for so many years now that he quite simply does not know what else to do with his time. It is a pity in many ways because obviously he must have millions in the bank and therefore hardly needs to go out and do all this touring from a financial point of view. In fact he must be so rich that he could retire tomorrow and live an extremely comfortable life, just as he could have done 30 years ago. There is little evidence that he gets to enjoy his money by taking out some quality time, either resting at one of his many houses or visiting his many grandchildren or stuff like that. If he is not into those things he could always go off and do a hiking tour of the Andes or something interesting that might give him a new perspective on things. To be brutally honest no one is going to miss him for a while if he does take a break because for the last few years he has rolled into town so frequently that it hardly seems like he has been away before he is back again.
It might be different if Bob displayed signs that he was in love with what he is doing, that he was out there giving performances of his life. This is just not the case however. For the main the performances have been turgid, repetitive and above all numbingly predictable, especially towards the end of the show when everyone knows what songs are going to finish the main set and what songs are going to be performed in the encore. Things are beginning to look a bit frayed around the edges as a result. It is difficult to see any of this stopping in the near future. Bob is as locked in now as he ever was to this cycle of going out there on the road and playing his shows. At the moment he seems to be going through a sticky patch and it is clear that his solution is simply going to be to see it through and hope it evolves into something better. It probably will but at the moment it is all rather painful and more than a little irritating.
People who want rare songs, different songs, might be disappointed but that is probably because they are not getting the point. When the music is good it doesn’t really matter what the songs are because the music transcends those limitations; you are just in the experience of the moment and within that there are so many little things going on that it is impossible for 2 versions of the same song to ever evolve in the same way and therefore there is little danger of getting bored. That is why I think Bob does it, that is go out on the road again and again, year after year, playing to countless thousands of people across the globe. I’m sure he takes in the geography of all the places he visits but the fact is that he is centre stage when it is show time and he enjoys it like nothing else, he loves it in fact. If you wish to join him then all you have to do is go out and buy yourself a ticket to one of his shows the next time he is in town. Then if you like what you see and hear you can go and see him again. It will always be different, because he is a searcher, a seeker, a permanent wanderer of the earth, ploughing the furrow of his art, and he will never stop. Even when he gets very old and has to be helped on stage I am sure that he will still do it because like it or not the stage is Bob Dylan’s theatre of magnificence.
Wrote the above close to a canal in Hertfordshire on a baking hot Saturday afternoon in June in the middle of the 2006 World Cup. Guess you could say it is the result of a positive period of thinking about Bob and his contribution to the world. I enjoyed going to the two shows I went to last week – one in Cardiff and one in Bournemouth. I suppose I am surprised at how different they were in terms of experience despite the fact that when it came to the actual sets that were played by Bob and his band they were remarkably similar. The differences lay more in fact that of the places where the shows took place more than anything else. How rough Cardiff looked, full people worse for drink with there being almost an air of madness about the place. Bournemouth in comparison was sunny and the people were very civilised. I arrived in town with a few hours to spare so I was able to go for a long walk by sea and then sit at leisure in the park in the middle of town where a music festival was taking place, the highlight of which was a local jazz orchestra do a pretty cool version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
It is nice thinking about Bob when he is on the road and playing shows in so many different places. His life is very different to mine where I spend most of my working life cooked up in an office in Ilford. There have been countless occasions where I have gone on the Net and stared at Bob’s tour itinerary and wished that I was him; after all not only does he get to go to tons of different places but most nights he has the chance to go to a Bob Dylan show! So in some sense I live this fantasy kind of life for a few minutes each day, where I imagine how it must be for Bob to be on the road; no sooner to arrive some place than to be on the way to the next stop along the line. The number of different towns and cities that Bob must have played in particularly in Europe and North America must now be quite staggering. It is something that I imagine I would love to do, even just going away for a couple of nights in the way that I did last week still has to be classified as being some kind of big adventure for me.
There is that sense of great freedom that comes from being in a place for sometimes no more than a couple of hours and then being able to move on, possibly never to see it again. I guess in reality it is not freedom at all because the state of mind is dependent on the change of the physical environment whereas in actual fact real freedom lies in being able to stay in one place no matter how rough and ready it might be and not to let it bother you. Of course there has to be some kind of basic consideration made but as long as the place is not too dangerous or in a state of war then it should be adequate enough to support you without complaint.
That is something that Bob does not have to contend because the road is an ever-moving show as far as he is concerned. It must be easy in some way to lose yourself to it and not know your way back home. In Cardiff, which I guess I would classify as a bad night as far as seeing Bob was concerned, I think I had this sense of how Bob might in actual fact be just as lost as the rest of us. In other words he is doing what he is doing because he just can’t come up with anything else to occupy his mind. Not all the time of course but almost certainly due to the frequency he is out on the road and playing shows there must be times when he just does not want to be there, just does not want to do it. Then he is just as trapped as we all are in our own little worlds of struggle and woe when we can’t find our way to the place of inner contentment.
Bob Live – Bad Thoughts
The question that has to be asked is does Bob even know why he is doing what he is doing anymore? After experiencing the 2 UK shows that formed part of the 2006 Europe Summer Tour I have to say that the overall impression that I have of Bob at present is that he is lost, trapped within the armour of his own mythology. Here he is over in Europe yet again, barely 8 months since he was last here when he undertook an autumn extensive tour; now he is playing a whole load of European shows until the last of week of July. Then he is off back to the States for a tour through August and the first half of September. Why? Judging by the 2 performances I have just seen recently I have to ask what exactly is the point? He is playing no new material despite the fact he has Modern Times, his first album in five years out at the end of August. His fear and loathing of bootleggers puts paid to any such fanciful notions that he would delight listeners with advance previews of some of the songs on it. The songs that he currently plays are by and large crushingly predictable with virtually no chance of an obscure forgotten gem being performed. Not only that but the standard of performances has without a doubt gone down. This last fact is a combination of the individual input from Bob who is now permanently on the keyboards and the fact that his current band are really rather boring.
There is simply no getting away from the fact that the best line up Bob has had in recent years when it comes to the band was the one with Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton on guitars and Bob on guitar also, backed by the ever present Tony Garnier on bass and either Dave Kemper or George Recile on drums. Gradually most seasoned Bob watchers are beginning to realise that this is the case. Things have changed since then however with both Larry and Charlie long gone and Bob these days now on the electric piano or organ and not playing them all that well, it has to be said. Logging onto the website which carries reviews from fans of his current series of shows it is interesting and unsettling to read just how negative some of them are about Bob and his current band. People are prepared to be quite harsh in their descriptions of him…sad, pathetic, atrocious… being some of the words used. I don’t think I can remember words being used like that for a long time by his fans but they are now.
So why is he here again, presenting his material in such a way? As I said before I think it is because he has become lost. Bob has toured and played for so many years now that he quite simply does not know what else to do with his time. It is a pity in many ways because obviously he must have millions in the bank and therefore hardly needs to go out and do all this touring from a financial point of view. In fact he must be so rich that he could retire tomorrow and live an extremely comfortable life, just as he could have done 30 years ago. There is little evidence that he gets to enjoy his money by taking out some quality time, either resting at one of his many houses or visiting his many grandchildren or stuff like that. If he is not into those things he could always go off and do a hiking tour of the Andes or something interesting that might give him a new perspective on things. To be brutally honest no one is going to miss him for a while if he does take a break because for the last few years he has rolled into town so frequently that it hardly seems like he has been away before he is back again.
It might be different if Bob displayed signs that he was in love with what he is doing, that he was out there giving performances of his life. This is just not the case however. For the main the performances have been turgid, repetitive and above all numbingly predictable, especially towards the end of the show when everyone knows what songs are going to finish the main set and what songs are going to be performed in the encore. Things are beginning to look a bit frayed around the edges as a result. It is difficult to see any of this stopping in the near future. Bob is as locked in now as he ever was to this cycle of going out there on the road and playing his shows. At the moment he seems to be going through a sticky patch and it is clear that his solution is simply going to be to see it through and hope it evolves into something better. It probably will but at the moment it is all rather painful and more than a little irritating.
Monday, July 03, 2006
Bob Dylan in Cardiff June 27th
Arrived in Wales late afternoon for the Bob Dylan show in Cardiff that evening at 7.30 pm. Driving down into Penarth off the M4 the sun came out and all of a sudden everything looked beautiful. By the time I got to Cardiff Bay to take the road into Penarth I was astounded at how much development was going on down there, blocks and blocks of flats were rising up from out of what for years and years had been a wasteland but it instantly appeared more desolate to me; at least before it was a strangely beautiful desolation, home for thousands of birds who day after day flew over the mudflats. All that has gone now as man has moved in and man has brought his unique brand of ugliness to the show as well. Pity the poor people who live there although they probably don’t deserve any.
Stopped briefly in Penarth just to dump my stuff at my parents flat and then head off out again to take the train from Penarth into Cardiff. When I got to the station I found there was a replacement bus service in operation which would take me from Penarth to Cogan, a few miles down the road and I would then get the train from there. This meant that by the time I reached Cardiff Central it was just gone 6pm. Walking out of the station I was confronted with the sight of a row of drunks in the forecourt outside the station. One of them had his face covered in blood and there was also a pool of blood in front of him. He was saying in a broad Cardiff accent “It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s my fucking dog and I can handle it!” I walked on at a brisk pace in the direction of the Cardiff International Arena, didn’t want to catch any more of that thank you very much, and by the time I got there the inevitable queue was already halfway round the block. The usual kind of people were there, people like me; early middle aged, the medium middle aged and the ancient middle aged. All of us trying our best to hide various degrees of desperation.
We did not have to wait that long before we were let into the arena and after a quick piss in the bogs I made my way across the floor and found a reasonable position in the gaggle of people about a dozen rows from the stage. It was now just a question of standing there and waiting for the next 90 minutes or so before Bob came on. I had been in this position many times before over the last dozen years or so as it was now my 27th Bob Dylan show since first seeing him at the Hammersmith Apollo back in 1993. You could say that the first time I saw him I was converted. There were the usual rituals to get through before Bob came on stage – the Oriental guy with the limp walking round the stage tuning all the guitars, the incense lit in a couple of buckets at the back of the stage before it wafted over the audience in thick fragrant clouds, spotting the amp on which Bob’s Oscar stood and the classical music pumped over the PA before Bob and the boys finally appeared from out of the shadows as the standard announcement of introduction was given. The usual conversation floated about as we were waiting, from people who were seeing Bob for the first time to people who had seen him hundreds of times; all speculating, anticipating, wondering just what was going to be on the menu.
The set turned out to be heavily tilted towards the 60’s from which 10 out of the 15 songs came, along with one from 1970, two from ’97 and two from 2001. For me the best two songs of the night were the reworked ’97 songs from Time Out of Mind, an album that saw the beginning of the process of Bob’s critical rehabilitation, although it is now quite popular in Dylan circles to claim that it is not half as good as what people first thought it was. Personally I disagree with this re-assessment as in my book it is an absolute classic Bob Dylan album and it is interesting that in a live context the Time Out of Mind songs have been far more radically re-worked than any of the songs on Love and Theft.
Love Sick was quite simply the best live version of the song I have heard Bob play yet with thunderous echo applied to his voice and an atmosphere created of intense brooding. If Love Sick was impressive then Cold Irons Bound, one of the supposedly lesser songs from Time Out of Mind, was stunning and was without doubt the best song of the show, building up as it did to a tremendous climax. This was the show stopper and although it is seen by people who think they know all about Dylan as one of the lesser songs from the album it is significant that it has remained a solid fixture of Bob’s set more or less since 1997 and it has also gone through a number of different incarnations.
From Bob’s current band I really like George Recile, who has been Bob’s drummer since 2002, he really gives the skins a good pounding when the occasion warrants it and Cold Irons Bound certainly required him to let rip which he did with a glorious but fully controlled abandon. Recile also gave a great performance on Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee the third song of the set and also in my opinion one of the best performed numbers of the night. This Love and Theft song in particular seems to be disliked by a great many regular Bob viewers but I have to say myself that I think it is a song that is constantly evolving and if listened to closely contains tremendous musical innovation.
It was surprising that in the main it was the more recent material that stuck in the memory for me although that is not to say that the ‘60s stuff was to be dismissed, far from it in fact. Positively Fourth Street for one contained some great keyboard work from Bob whilst Watching the River Flow rolled along at a very pleasing pace and was simply tremendous as was Ballad of a Thin Man which brought one of Bob’s better vocal deliveries of the night. Stuck Inside of Mobile was fine whilst Absolutely Sweet Marie had some great music but poor vocals from Bob. Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright was the big crowd pleaser towards the end of the main set.
The most unfortunate aspect of the whole show for me didn’t really have much to do with Bob; it was more to do with the simple fact that it was in Cardiff where a hell of a lot of people had clearly been drinking in significant quantities for good few hours beforehand. This was fully brought home to the section of the crowd in which I was standing halfway through the second song of the night, a reasonably good She Belongs to Me. It was at this point that our space was invaded by a shaven headed man of around 40, who was clearly drunk, wildly dancing and full of aggression, jostling people to push his way through until he ended up not too far in front of me. The woman who was with him and who he had dragged through the crowd was just as bad as him, if not worse. They crashed into the couple, a young lad and his girlfriend, who were just in front of me who had been patiently waiting for over the last hour.
The lad tried to complain at the drunk but was meet with a torrent of abuse, almost to point where he was lucky not to get a punch in the face. Such aggression and total disregard for others was really quite sickening and cast a shadow over the whole show not just for me but also for a good few people around me as well. There was really not much that could be done as it was quite obvious that the shaven headed drunk would not have minded staying there dancing to Bob and bumping into people or getting into a big punch up and getting thrown out. It was the same for him as to which possibility would arise, that was clear. A final attempt was made by the young lad to reason with him but the shaven head just shouted in a broad Cardiff accent, “Not interested, not fucking interested. I’m dancing OK? I’m dancing!” This was vociferously backed up by his woman and at it was at that point that everyone realised it was going to be better to just try and ignore them; accommodate them as best they could in the confined space we were inhabiting, just 8 rows or so from the front of the stage in an arena full of people.
That little incident was quite a distraction as far as my mind was concerned. There was nothing that really could have been done however, as discussion and reason were not what the man wanted to get involved in. It amazed me how aggressive people were prepared to behave and how they really couldn’t give a fuck about what effect their actions might have on other people. In this case the shaven head was solely interested in himself and his pleasure, irrespective of the effect his actions might be having on others. The most galling thing about it was that as the show went on and he continued with his wild gyrations it was quite clear that he was familiar with virtually all of the songs that Bob played! So it wasn’t just a case of him being a drunk at a concert who was there more because of the concert rather than the artist who was performing. No, he was clearly there because he liked Bob Dylan and dug his music to enough of an extent to fork out good money to get a ticket to see him. In my mind that requires a person to have at least a certain amount of sensitivity in order to get the most of the material. Then again maybe I’m just plain wrong. Strange all the same.
When a pretty unimpressive Girl of the North Country finished and Tony Garnier readied himself with the stand up bass I knew that Summer Days was coming next and with it the end of the main set. After the antics of the shaven head I felt like I needed a drink and so I made my way out of the crowd and joined the long queue at the bar. This was something I had never done before in all the times that I had seen Bob play. When I found my spot I always stayed there right to the bitter end but this time I really found the prospect of a cold pint of lager more appealing than witnessing yet another rendition of Summer Days which would no doubt be danced wildly to by the shaven headed drunk and his girlfriend. It took a fair few minutes to work my way out of the crowd and at times it was not easy, with more than a few Welshmen unwilling to make way for me despite the fact I was wanting to go backwards and not forwards. Their attitude seemed to be one of anything to make it as difficult as possible for people.
By the time I got my precious lager the end of the main set had been and gone and Bob was halfway through Like a Rolling Stone the first song of the encore. From my new position right at the back of the arena it all seemed rather unimpressive and despite the inevitable roar which came at the end of the song I felt that I had seen and heard him play it far better on many occasions in the past. The same went for All Along the Watchtower that, far from being the usual sterling rendition was actually pretty bad. It was at this stage that I really felt that Bob had fully sensed the vibe of Cardiff and had decided to let us have it as he proceeded to murder the words to the song. In his mind he was already on the tour bus and out of there; on the road to next place along the line. I have to say that I didn’t blame him in any way whatsoever. Cardiff, despite all its pretensions, can still appear at times to be a first class dump populated by some of the roughest people on the planet. End of story.
As I made my way through Cardiff Central to get the replacement coach service back to Penarth I saw a man who was about six foot six pushing a supermarket trolley full of black bin bags through the station entrance. He had a pair of tracksuit bottoms on which were slung low enough so that the upper cheeks of his arse were clearly visible, and he was wearing a pair of slippers. His hair was forming dreadlocks because it had not been washed for so long and he had a half crazed look on his face as he stared at the people passing by. This just about summed up the whole Cardiff experience for me, and the next morning I was out of town by 9.30 and on the road to Bournemouth, in search of Bob Dylan.
Stopped briefly in Penarth just to dump my stuff at my parents flat and then head off out again to take the train from Penarth into Cardiff. When I got to the station I found there was a replacement bus service in operation which would take me from Penarth to Cogan, a few miles down the road and I would then get the train from there. This meant that by the time I reached Cardiff Central it was just gone 6pm. Walking out of the station I was confronted with the sight of a row of drunks in the forecourt outside the station. One of them had his face covered in blood and there was also a pool of blood in front of him. He was saying in a broad Cardiff accent “It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s my fucking dog and I can handle it!” I walked on at a brisk pace in the direction of the Cardiff International Arena, didn’t want to catch any more of that thank you very much, and by the time I got there the inevitable queue was already halfway round the block. The usual kind of people were there, people like me; early middle aged, the medium middle aged and the ancient middle aged. All of us trying our best to hide various degrees of desperation.
We did not have to wait that long before we were let into the arena and after a quick piss in the bogs I made my way across the floor and found a reasonable position in the gaggle of people about a dozen rows from the stage. It was now just a question of standing there and waiting for the next 90 minutes or so before Bob came on. I had been in this position many times before over the last dozen years or so as it was now my 27th Bob Dylan show since first seeing him at the Hammersmith Apollo back in 1993. You could say that the first time I saw him I was converted. There were the usual rituals to get through before Bob came on stage – the Oriental guy with the limp walking round the stage tuning all the guitars, the incense lit in a couple of buckets at the back of the stage before it wafted over the audience in thick fragrant clouds, spotting the amp on which Bob’s Oscar stood and the classical music pumped over the PA before Bob and the boys finally appeared from out of the shadows as the standard announcement of introduction was given. The usual conversation floated about as we were waiting, from people who were seeing Bob for the first time to people who had seen him hundreds of times; all speculating, anticipating, wondering just what was going to be on the menu.
The set turned out to be heavily tilted towards the 60’s from which 10 out of the 15 songs came, along with one from 1970, two from ’97 and two from 2001. For me the best two songs of the night were the reworked ’97 songs from Time Out of Mind, an album that saw the beginning of the process of Bob’s critical rehabilitation, although it is now quite popular in Dylan circles to claim that it is not half as good as what people first thought it was. Personally I disagree with this re-assessment as in my book it is an absolute classic Bob Dylan album and it is interesting that in a live context the Time Out of Mind songs have been far more radically re-worked than any of the songs on Love and Theft.
Love Sick was quite simply the best live version of the song I have heard Bob play yet with thunderous echo applied to his voice and an atmosphere created of intense brooding. If Love Sick was impressive then Cold Irons Bound, one of the supposedly lesser songs from Time Out of Mind, was stunning and was without doubt the best song of the show, building up as it did to a tremendous climax. This was the show stopper and although it is seen by people who think they know all about Dylan as one of the lesser songs from the album it is significant that it has remained a solid fixture of Bob’s set more or less since 1997 and it has also gone through a number of different incarnations.
From Bob’s current band I really like George Recile, who has been Bob’s drummer since 2002, he really gives the skins a good pounding when the occasion warrants it and Cold Irons Bound certainly required him to let rip which he did with a glorious but fully controlled abandon. Recile also gave a great performance on Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee the third song of the set and also in my opinion one of the best performed numbers of the night. This Love and Theft song in particular seems to be disliked by a great many regular Bob viewers but I have to say myself that I think it is a song that is constantly evolving and if listened to closely contains tremendous musical innovation.
It was surprising that in the main it was the more recent material that stuck in the memory for me although that is not to say that the ‘60s stuff was to be dismissed, far from it in fact. Positively Fourth Street for one contained some great keyboard work from Bob whilst Watching the River Flow rolled along at a very pleasing pace and was simply tremendous as was Ballad of a Thin Man which brought one of Bob’s better vocal deliveries of the night. Stuck Inside of Mobile was fine whilst Absolutely Sweet Marie had some great music but poor vocals from Bob. Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright was the big crowd pleaser towards the end of the main set.
The most unfortunate aspect of the whole show for me didn’t really have much to do with Bob; it was more to do with the simple fact that it was in Cardiff where a hell of a lot of people had clearly been drinking in significant quantities for good few hours beforehand. This was fully brought home to the section of the crowd in which I was standing halfway through the second song of the night, a reasonably good She Belongs to Me. It was at this point that our space was invaded by a shaven headed man of around 40, who was clearly drunk, wildly dancing and full of aggression, jostling people to push his way through until he ended up not too far in front of me. The woman who was with him and who he had dragged through the crowd was just as bad as him, if not worse. They crashed into the couple, a young lad and his girlfriend, who were just in front of me who had been patiently waiting for over the last hour.
The lad tried to complain at the drunk but was meet with a torrent of abuse, almost to point where he was lucky not to get a punch in the face. Such aggression and total disregard for others was really quite sickening and cast a shadow over the whole show not just for me but also for a good few people around me as well. There was really not much that could be done as it was quite obvious that the shaven headed drunk would not have minded staying there dancing to Bob and bumping into people or getting into a big punch up and getting thrown out. It was the same for him as to which possibility would arise, that was clear. A final attempt was made by the young lad to reason with him but the shaven head just shouted in a broad Cardiff accent, “Not interested, not fucking interested. I’m dancing OK? I’m dancing!” This was vociferously backed up by his woman and at it was at that point that everyone realised it was going to be better to just try and ignore them; accommodate them as best they could in the confined space we were inhabiting, just 8 rows or so from the front of the stage in an arena full of people.
That little incident was quite a distraction as far as my mind was concerned. There was nothing that really could have been done however, as discussion and reason were not what the man wanted to get involved in. It amazed me how aggressive people were prepared to behave and how they really couldn’t give a fuck about what effect their actions might have on other people. In this case the shaven head was solely interested in himself and his pleasure, irrespective of the effect his actions might be having on others. The most galling thing about it was that as the show went on and he continued with his wild gyrations it was quite clear that he was familiar with virtually all of the songs that Bob played! So it wasn’t just a case of him being a drunk at a concert who was there more because of the concert rather than the artist who was performing. No, he was clearly there because he liked Bob Dylan and dug his music to enough of an extent to fork out good money to get a ticket to see him. In my mind that requires a person to have at least a certain amount of sensitivity in order to get the most of the material. Then again maybe I’m just plain wrong. Strange all the same.
When a pretty unimpressive Girl of the North Country finished and Tony Garnier readied himself with the stand up bass I knew that Summer Days was coming next and with it the end of the main set. After the antics of the shaven head I felt like I needed a drink and so I made my way out of the crowd and joined the long queue at the bar. This was something I had never done before in all the times that I had seen Bob play. When I found my spot I always stayed there right to the bitter end but this time I really found the prospect of a cold pint of lager more appealing than witnessing yet another rendition of Summer Days which would no doubt be danced wildly to by the shaven headed drunk and his girlfriend. It took a fair few minutes to work my way out of the crowd and at times it was not easy, with more than a few Welshmen unwilling to make way for me despite the fact I was wanting to go backwards and not forwards. Their attitude seemed to be one of anything to make it as difficult as possible for people.
By the time I got my precious lager the end of the main set had been and gone and Bob was halfway through Like a Rolling Stone the first song of the encore. From my new position right at the back of the arena it all seemed rather unimpressive and despite the inevitable roar which came at the end of the song I felt that I had seen and heard him play it far better on many occasions in the past. The same went for All Along the Watchtower that, far from being the usual sterling rendition was actually pretty bad. It was at this stage that I really felt that Bob had fully sensed the vibe of Cardiff and had decided to let us have it as he proceeded to murder the words to the song. In his mind he was already on the tour bus and out of there; on the road to next place along the line. I have to say that I didn’t blame him in any way whatsoever. Cardiff, despite all its pretensions, can still appear at times to be a first class dump populated by some of the roughest people on the planet. End of story.
As I made my way through Cardiff Central to get the replacement coach service back to Penarth I saw a man who was about six foot six pushing a supermarket trolley full of black bin bags through the station entrance. He had a pair of tracksuit bottoms on which were slung low enough so that the upper cheeks of his arse were clearly visible, and he was wearing a pair of slippers. His hair was forming dreadlocks because it had not been washed for so long and he had a half crazed look on his face as he stared at the people passing by. This just about summed up the whole Cardiff experience for me, and the next morning I was out of town by 9.30 and on the road to Bournemouth, in search of Bob Dylan.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)