Live Dylan: Harvard 2004
date: 2004-11-21
location: Gordon Track and Tennis Center, Harvard University
boblink: http://boblinks.com/dates22.html#1121
opener: Rainy Day Women
personal favorites played: High Water (For Charlie Patton), John Brown
Bob factor: This was the last show of 2004, and Bob seems to be in a good mood. He gets the audience to sing along with Rainy Day Women, and while he mumbles and rushes the lyrics more than I’d like, he does pick out some nice melodies to offset the more annoying quirks of the evening. (more…)
March 25th, 2008 - Posted in Live Dylan | | 0 Comments
Braves thoughts
Despite my lifelong love of baseball, I have a hard time writing about it. The logical positivist part of my brain tells me that it’s pointless to talk about what hasn’t happened yet. No one knows what’s going to happen this season, and the people who are considered “experts” at knowing it are really just as clueless–if more shrill–than the rest. This theory, in case you hadn’t noticed, invalidates about 90% of sports yakking and is why I’ve taken the liberating step of not listening to much of it anymore.
So what’s a rational being to do? Ask the same unanswerable questions everyone else is asking? It seems like a bad idea, and yet what else do we talk about? To make myself feel better, I’ll avoid phrasing them in the form of a question. So here, in a declarative fashion, are the points I’m thinking about as the season ramps up. (more…)
March 19th, 2008 - Posted in baseball | | 0 Comments
Tom Jones FAQ
Q: What happened to your face?!
A: It got rocked off.
Q: Really? That sounds terrible.
A: Not so much. Happened at a Tom Jones concert.
Q: You went to Tom Jones. On purpose?
A: Yeah, we went with the company. Had a blast. Tom Jones rules.
Q: Why does Tom Jones rule? I thought he was just old.
A: The dude is almost 70, and he’s still an amazing performer. I was expecting an old man on a stool. But he had a great band, completely modern arrangements, and he put on a much better show than a lot artists half his age.
Q: How was the sound? It was probably terrible.
A: No, actually, the Mystic Lake casino has a really modern room. Found out afterwards that it holds about 2100 people, and it’s a really well-groomed room. The bass wasn’t overpowering, and the mix was nice even though they kept the volume low for the mostly over-50 audience.
Q: So he wasn’t boring?
A: Not at all. He had this great rapport with the audience. Always talking, always dancing. He kind of rolled his eyes every once in a while when he knew a line in the song or a bit of banter was cheesy, but it just gave you the feeling that he was letting you in on the joke. Pretty sure he shouted out to “Michigan” rather than “Minnesota” at the beginning, but whattayagonnado?
Q: Good setlist?
A: The guy obviously knows which side his bread is buttered on. Saved the 1-2-3 punch of “She’s A Lady,” “Not Unusual,” and “Sexbomb” until near the end of the show, and closed the encore with Prince’s Kiss, the first time most people in my generation had ever heard of the guy. He might have been pandering to middle America a little by doing country ballads by both George Jones and Merle Haggard, but I didn’t mind.
Q: Check you out. You sound like a fanboy.
A: Yeah, I guess I kind of am. If I wasn’t before last weekend, I sure am now.
Q: Oh my… you… You threw your underwear on the stage, didn’t you?
A: No, but even if I had it wouldn’t have been as good a moment as when one lady got pushed down in her wheelchair so she could throw hers.
March 18th, 2008 - Posted in Homelife, Music | | 0 Comments
Live Dylan: Sweden 2003
date: 2003-10-15
location: Göteborg, Sweden
boblink: http://boblinks.com/101503s.html
opener: Tombstone Blues
setlist oddities: five songs from Highway 61 Revisited
Bob factor: Bob was in good voice for most of 2003, as I recall. Here, his voice is a little rough, but he makes up for it well. He sings rather than barks, picks out melodies rather than deadpanning, and seems quite into the performance. (more…)
March 11th, 2008 - Posted in Live Dylan | | 0 Comments
Live Dylan: something to talk about
Write what you know, they say. I’ve collected Bob Dylan live recordings in one format or another for 16 years. These days, my box of cassettes sits unused while most of my collection is in MP3 format. A quick glance through my music folder shows me I have over 40 live shows or sets of live shows, and there are probably more tucked away in other places.
So I’m going to start listening to them and maybe, in the process, start to filter some out that I don’t really need anymore.
March 11th, 2008 - Posted in Live Dylan | | 0 Comments
Super Superbowl
Oh to win! Even if it was close it was still a win. “What is this” you say “since when do you care about football?” I reply “when it gets me 3 weeks of complaint free cleaning.” Yes Yacko in his over confident way chose the higher rated team and did enough bragging about a final score. I made him put his money where his mouth was and bet 3 weeks of cleaning. I admit there was that tense moment after the Pats scored but Manning came though for me. I have to go now and get my list started.
February 3rd, 2008 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 0 Comments
The annual music-of-the-year post
What would a year of sparse posting on this blog be without my year-end list of music? My listening habits are kind of crap lately, so I don’t have much of a system anymore except to look at other people’s year-end lists and say “oh yeah, I liked that one.” But for what it’s worth, here it is. To save space, I’ll put the top 2 above the fold. Click through for 3-10.
The National - Boxer
I’d like to think that my musical tastes have grown up with me. Smarter (or at least more wily), with a more mature wit, and less acerbic without being any less rocking. So I heard Boxer and i said to myself, “Oh, I get it. This is kinda like me.”
Brother Ali - The Undisputed Truth
Political / socially conscious music is hard to find these days, and when you do they’re often preachy and uninteresting, like Tom Morello. These problems are magnified in hip hop because there’s such an emphasis on materialism and thugishness. But Ali finds just the right mix of authentic rage and confessional candor. He talks about his personal demons in a way that makes you believe him. His outlook might be angry, but you see quickly that it’s directed anger.
(more…)
December 26th, 2007 - Posted in Music | | 0 Comments
Incoming
Welcome, readers of our Christmas letter. Our New Year’s resolution is to blog more. Please note that it is not the new year yet, however.
More regular contributions are on the way. I’d also say “a redesign is on the way,” but the Internetz are littered with sites boasting “new update coming July 12, 1998″ and such. I don’t want to even set my foot down close to that hole…
December 18th, 2007 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 0 Comments
Whacko’s book reading
Take a look. Please leave a comment below if you see it, so he can tell his class how many people viewed it.
updated: it’s been up there long enough. I’m sure there will be more, so you’ll just have to stay tuned.
September 17th, 2007 - Posted in Homelife | | 5 Comments
“Life doesn’t get any better than this”
…said the sign hanging on the door of the dumpy apartment in the rundown part of town, the kind of place where they used metal pipes instead of railings, and not as a design choice. I saw the sign and it occurred to me that I couldn’t tell if it was meant out of happiness or despair.
September 15th, 2007 - Posted in Pizza | | 0 Comments
