Reviews

Karlstad and Stockholm.

The 21. st of october it`ll be a year since I saw Bob the last time
(Phoenix - Arizone) and a lot of things have happend since then. Bob have
allmost abandoned his guitar for the piano, he`s left senterstage and
Charlie Sexton has left him. I have to admit I was bit worried before the
Stockholm concert. The comments from some friends who saw him in Helsinki
and told me about an average show with only one highlight; "Boots of
Spanish leather" also made me a bit suspicious that the concert (or the
next 7 concerts - Stockholm to Hamburg -that I will attend, will probably
not be up to the high standard of the 6 US shows I saw last autumn. But,
here`s what happend:

The Stockholm show was a good solid show - maybe too few highlights, but
on the other hand really no lowpoints at all. Maybe the version of "Boots"
was a small disappointment to me, not because it was bad - it was in fact
quite nice - but because it was hyped as the great highlight in Helsinki.
My highlights were Tom Thumb`s blues - have only heard that song once or
twice before in my 25 years long Bob-watching career. It`s such a great
song. Hard to spoil it. Every grain of sand could have been the big
highlight, but sorry to say - Bob`s harmonica playing destroyed the song.
For some reason I can`t explain, I also found the Stockholmversion of LARS
as a standout. It reminded me of a LARS-version in Malmø (south in
Sweeden) in 1996. Usely I`m a bit tired of LARS, but from time to time it
gets through to me as the masterpiece the song most Dylanfans think it is.
Otherwise I have to say I liked freddy Koellas playing - luckily I did`nt
missed Charlie too much (except for the harmonysinging)and Bob`s voice was
better than average the whole concert through. All in all a solid
performence, with a potencial of getting better. (Why do Bob allways have
to start his European shows in Scandinavia? - We have had our share of
Jet-lag- Bob!) But then, on to Karlstad. A small town in the middle of
nowhere. And I`m really happy to say this night the potencial from
Stockholm really came through. I`m travelling with a bunch of really
experienced Bobwatchers (or what the hell you call us). Some of them have
seen more than 200 shows (myself about 70)and a lot of us agreed that
tonights version of Desolation Row was the best one we have ever heard (or
at least witnessed). Perfect singing! Bob nailed allmost all the lines in
allmost all the original verses - well, what more can I say? Nice
sologuitar/picking by Koella and the other guys up to their best. What
stories we will tell about that song in 10 years from now you can hardly
imagine. But it was allmost clear that this was gonna be a great show from
the beginning. Bob was ON from the very start and allmost up there all the
way. "Boots" was really great, Every Grain of sand, Moonlight, Mr
Tambourine man (as usual), a Summerdays up to the high standard of
latterday Sexton-band and Forever young which allways remind me of my two
first Bob-concerts in Gothenburgh back in 1978. What a show? Today as I
write this, there`s only a couple of houers before I`ll see him in Oslo,
my beloved hometown. It`s possible to get even better than last night and
I cross my fingers that he will. (Oslo was in my and many others opinion
the very best show on the 2002 European show - my wife who have seen 10 or
15 concerts through the years was convinced it was the best concert she
had seen ever - what a lucky man I`ll be if she says the same thing
tonight. (Then I can travel on with my companions without the bad feeling
of leaving her back home - did you undesrstand that?

At last I want to thank Jørgen and Micke for all the excellent tickets in
Sweeden and I hope all our Swedish friends will be happy with the tickets
we have managed to get here. And to my dear friend Magne Karlstad (+200
Bob-shows) you really deserved a show like this in the town that have your
surname. Keep on - keepin` on!

Steinar Daler ("sunset")

After seeing the show in Stockholm, we went to Karlstad on the following
day, seeing some amazingly beautiful scenery on the way, with a clear blue
sky, and yellow leaves on the trees. For the Karlstad show at another huge
arena we had tickets for the tiers this time, tenth row up, but very much
up front, overlooking the first rows on the floor, with a perfect
binocular view over to the piano player and lead singer of this finest
band touring Europe this year. 

Not many song changes so far on this tour, so many song arrangements were
similar to the concert in Stockholm. Whoever has the urge to complain
about stuff like this, should consider that the vast majority of the
audience (any audience on any Dylan tour) will only see one show of that
particular tour. Bob Dylan does not perform to please the high
expectations of those few people going to multiple shows. So this tour
might not be the best playground for seeing eight or ten shows in a row,
and hearing 63 or 69 different songs, as my wife and I did in 2002 and
2000, here in the English speaking part of Europe.

So this Karlstad show lacked many surprises, even more so for us than for
most everybody else in this arena, as from our vantage point we could not
only see with our binoculars Bob very well at the far end of the stage,
but also at our side of the stage over the shoulder of the bearded sound
guy, actually right onto the cue sheet on his mixing desk. So while Bob
and his band rocked through song number eight (H61), I was writing down
the complete set list, so that for the remaining ten songs I did not have
to take any notes, the only addition on my paper being two “H”, indicating
the nice harmonica during the rocking “Cat's In The Well” and during the
beautiful “Forever Young”.

The musicians on stage were as good as on the previous night, and so I
also enjoyed hearing other songs for the second time, most of all the new
“Boots Of Spanish Leather”, and the sublime “Every Grain Of Sand”, my
favourite of all Dylan songs. Even if he does not get all the lyrics right
in all the songs, this voice of Bob Dylan remains the finest instrument in
music history. 

Which brings me to the one big surprise for me on that night, and to the
early peak of the show, “Desolation Row”. This simply was one brilliant
performance of that great song of his, with some minor lyrical mistakes,
but I did not care. This version had many verses, I took some notes during
this stellar rendition.

1-selling postcards
2-cinderella
3-moon is almost hidden
4-dr filth
5-einstein disguised
6-(great guitar solo from Freddie Koella)
7-at midnight all the agents
8-(Freddie again on guitar)
9-[harp solo by bob]
10-received your letter
11-(one more fine Koella solo)

Anything can happen at a Bob Dylan concert. That is one reason why I keep
going. I read today that “Highlands” was sound checked in Karlstad. That
would have been nice, as we have seen the only European performance of
that song so far, in Glasgow, three years ago. Well, we have four more
shows to go to in November, two in our native Germany, and the other two
in Ireland, from where I write this review, 44 miles south east of
Millstreet. Surprises or not, I suppose we will not be disappointed.

Markus Prieur
http://www.notdarkyet.org/

About guitars and kissing.

Stockholm and Karlstad
I've spent some time thinking (and talking) badly about Larry lately.
Before the current tour, and especially after the Stockholm show. I heard
about this great version of Boots from Helsinki, and had some
expectations, which were all thrashed after hearing it in Stockholm.
Usually, I welcome a new arrangement, but this? A dull run of parallel
thirds and sixths, with some dubious part writing (yeah, well, music
analysis is what I do for a living, so what can you expect?), and my guess
is it comes from Larry - he's the one playing it, and it fits well in with
what I consider to be his style: very professional, very stylized, pretty,
pretty, but, hey, there's something missing in there, isn't there? He
probably has a bag of tricks and licks that is bigger than most guitar
players alive, and he is capable of piecing them together in a way that
both works musically in their own right and holds the back-bone of the
song. But still - his playing is a musical reflection of his clothes
style: impeccable, elegant, in style, but where is the deep involvement
with the world, with experience, blood, guts, love, dirt under finger
nails? Larry has no dirt under his finger nails. Cue to the other guy, the
scruffy little bum standing on the left, the slightly old, slightly bald
punk who looks like he slept in his suit. His playing is unpredictable.
Not that he doesn't repeat himself - he has his bag of tricks as well, and
it wouldn't surprise me if Dylan will get bored by them after a while: the
asymmetrical rhythms, the quick pull-off ornaments, the odd sustained
notes. But still, they are subversive rather than conservative. Here's a
transcript from the brainwave recorder placed on Koella's skull:

Wonder what happens if I put my finger somewhere around here on the
fretboard and strike the string now? 
Hm. Interesting sound. 
What if I just move the finger up and down a little? Yeah, I'll do that.

Wow! That was cool! I'll do it some more. 
Hey, there's a thick string way up here on my guitar, wonder what kind of
sound that produces. Fascinating! It's really dark! Once more! 

Etc. Something like that. Sometimes it doesn't work and falls flat. But
surprisingly often, one is left with a wide grin on one's face, and a
bewildered feeling of what on earth just happened? Cue back to the tall
guy with the fancy beard again. Transcript again:

" C       Dm        C       C#o       Dm                G       F   G
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|----------------- |
|-5---3---1-------|-1---------------|-3---3-----------|-3---3---1---3--- |
|-5---4---2---2---|-0-----------0---|-2---0-----------|-4---4---2---4--- |
|-------------3---|-2---3---2---2---|-3---2---3---2---|-5---5---3---5--- |
|-----------------|-----5---4-------|---------5---3---|----------------- |
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|----------------- |

[Looks to the right:] Why is he moving his finger up and down like that?
Odd. Bob seems to like it, though. Well, it sounds just like Bob too -
jeez, I thought we would be spared that ploink ploink when he decided to
buy this toy piano (how long will we have to tour before he can afford a
music stand too? I want my steel guitar back), and then he brings in a
guitarist who plays in the same way ... OK, my turn again, I have to play
some notes. Don't I have just the perfect lick for this particular
situation? Let's see... key of A, going to Bm, square time, tempo 124 bpm
- OK, got it, lick A-214b-J897678-(1978)."

I cannot reveal my source for these brain transcripts, but they are
accurate. An important point is that they were made in Stockholm.
Karlstad was a completely different thing, for several reasons.
Strangely enough (given my assessment above), the show was superior to
Stockholm on all or most songs, but Koella could hardly be heard, owing to
a bad mix and him taking only a few solos. I can't judge quite how bad the
mix was, because I was standing up front, right in front of Larry - and
Larry's monitors, which was all I heard during the second half of the
show. This of course made the musical experience (as opposed to the
concert experience) slightly odd, but I must admit that it was fascinating
to hear exactly what Larry did all the time. Tweedly Dum, for example -
he's really at work throughout the whole song, and the way he keeps the
riff going, while at the same time playing solos ... impressive. It was
also interesting to hear how many different things he does during
Watchtower, not in his solos, but in his rhythm playing.

Oslo
OK. So Larry was the star of the Karlstad show, guitarwise (even though
the greatness of the show did not lie in the guitar playing). Oslo was
something else again. Significantly enough, the three string-players wore
identical suits, and it's hard to tell which of the two guitarists who
"won". Not that that was an issue. The word 'concert' has often been
mistranslated as a concourse, a competition, while the real meaning is
more in the direction of concord, playing togehter, and that's what they
did in Oslo. (I sadly had to skip Gothenburg, but according to  reports,
the interplay between Freddie and Larry was the special thing about that
show.) The special occasion in Oslo was that during the darkness before
the encore, somehow a third guitar player had materialized on stage - a
long, blond, slightly nervous-looking character, who turned out to be
Mason Ruffner who plays on some tracks on Oh Mercy. I wouldn't say that
his playing made whole lot of a difference, but his presence did. Whether
it was, as has been suggested, that Koella's ego made him step forth just
a little bit more frequently (and just happened to be stopping right in
front of Ruffner, not taking the extra step towards centre stage that he
usually does), or that the presence of another music maker on stage
sharpened everyone's attention and concentration, or simply that the extra
sound source called for a different approach (I personally like the idea
that the reason Tony changed from upright to electric bass during Summer
Days, was musical - because the way the music developed called for a more
forceful bass sound - and not something as trivial as a broken string). Be
that as it may, it was the best encore set I've witnessed, for these
reasons. 

Copenhagen
I should perhaps say something about tonight's show too. I must admit it
is slightly difficult, since I've been having Desolation Row from Karlstad
on auto-repeat, so that my face occasionally contracts into what feels
like what I used to do when I was four and ran barefoot through grass that
was greener (and warmer - this was in the summertime) than anything I've
seen ever since; or my stomach feels like a stone that reminds me of a cat
that has curled up like a stone, just as weightless and deprieved
(liberated) of meaning as a stone. That kind of a stone. Copenhagen, as I
was about to say, was for me the best show so far. Thereby, I intend to
say that there was not a single low point, all the way through it was
wonderful, in the same way as in Beethoven's first string quartet (I'm
sorry, I don't have anything better to compare with, and this is a
compliment both to Dylan and Mr. Beety), where the tension that is
generated from the first motif, keeps one floating/airborne right through
the half (or two) hour(s) the quartet (or the show) lasts.

I don't know how the rest of you feel, but me myself, I have to confess to
often thinking, when the intro to forever Young or LARS is intoned, that,
shit, I could do without this - if I exchange the $5 that these minutes
have cost me, I might afford one of those fast-forward buttons. Not
tonight. Every minute mattered. Even during LARS (or, as a matter of fact,
especially during LARS, which was treated by Koella just like a
40-years-old antique should be treated: hard and lovingly), I had no other
thought than that this could go on forever. And yet, lo and behold, never
have I welcom'd more the cut of one encore. (neat shakespearian internal
rhyme, eh?) than when I heard the Highlander-intro to AATW, where Forever
Young would have ruined everything, but where Watchtower was perfect as a
Beethovenian final theme. Sometimes it's right to descend into the quiet
compound right before the end - sometimes it's not. Tonight it was not,
and Dylan did the right thing. So it goes. I haven't mentioned any
highlights yet. I could do that, of course. HWY61. AATW. Love-0 was
wonderfully slow. Summer Days was as good as I ever heard it. Even Memphis
Blues, which I otherwise can hardly stand, was extremely enjoyable, almost
incredibly good. I could go on, but that would just ruin my point (which
I've already indicated): that it was a brilliant CONCERT. Fair enough, we
didn't get any D-Row, and I can't really point to places where Dylan
proved himself to be the demi-god, the descendant of Orpheus and
Terpsichore, of Jubal and Erato, of Zeus and some cow in Gallup, New
Mexico that he certainly is, and, by way of a phrase or a plonk from his
divine piano, turned it into an unforgettable evening; that it still
turned out that way was a happy coincidence involving a highly human icon
(who had one too many harmonicas to keep track of), two guitar players who
just keep on exciting with their differences; a rhythm section who somehow
uphold both tact and tone; a magnificent sound on the 56th row; and great
company. 

My conclusion, whether it conforms with what I've written or not, is
that I enjoy Koella tremendously - in Stockholm he was the only thing I
really enjoyed - and  the moral of this story is that there's got to be
some spit in a kiss, in order for the beauty of it to work.

Postscript: This is probably not a concert review; I haven't listed all
the song and the solos and the lyric variations, or the instruments (heck,
there were instruments there that I don't even know the name of; there was
a huge pile of things that looked like kettles and pots, with a guy with a
funny hat beating on them like they were a beast, CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?!?
- and another huge wooden construction with some kind of metal cords
attached to it, which this other strange guy kept PLUCKING in a strange
way; -  hey, it was a genuine wax cabinet, man) - so it can't be a concert
review. Take it for what it is, whatever that is.