 |
|
3-3-04 // 10.25 am the cars on the freeway are moving like slugs NP: Matt Good Band - "Beautiful Midnight" Dylan show last night! Ryan H was waiting for me when I got home from work, we went and got a bite to eat at the Chinese place down the road. Good stuff, though not spicy enough. I always forget to have them "alter any dish to your taste". Drove down to Delmar, though all of the free parking around the venue was already filled. I think some of that had to do with the fact that there was a Blues game going on downtown and a lot of people parked at the Delmar station to take the metro to the arena. Anyway, I almost snagged a side street spot but backed off due to not quite being able to tell if the curb was painted a faded yellow. Ended up just driving down to the other end of the Loop and parking in one of the municipal lots there. Someone was selling $10 parking spots closer, but no way am I paying a tenner to plop my car down for a few hours. The walk did me good anyway. Got to the Pageant at least an hour, forty-five minutes early. Plenty of time, I thought, though I suppose I was wrong. The place was utterly packed -- not surprising considering an artist of Dylan's stature, the hardcore nature of his fanbase, and the fairly small size of the theater. Hit the bar and got an expensive pint of Newcastle & settled into to a standing-room spot left-center of stage. Passed the time talking with Ryan, observing weirdos in the audience, and listening to the "Bolero"-esque music piped in over the PA. About five past eight o'clock the music shifted to Copland & Dylan and his band came on. There were two drum kits and two drummers for some reason, though both drummers didn't always play on each song, and sometimes when they did they played the exact same things. Weird. Dylan was wearing a black suit and a gigantic white cowboy hat -- he played electric piano all night (supplemented with a bit of harmonica) and would bounce around the stage doing a little jig between songs and during guitar solos. Great band as usual -- Larry Campbell played fat, bluesy lead, tight lap steel, and mandolin. Freddy Koella was also excellent trading leads with Campbell and playing off the bass. Nice setlist, overall. Nothing from "Blood on the Tracks", sadly, but with 40+ years of songs to choose from he's not going to hit everything each night. Great surprise in hearing "Shooting Star", however. I love that song. Same with his take on "Girl of the North Country". "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Summer Days" were other highlights -- this really is a tight, honky-tonk/blues/rock band he's going going, and they play hard and rollicking the whole show. Anyway, for posterity, here's the whole setlist. (via some guy on the bobdylan.com message boards): 1. Down Along The Cove All in all, the show clocked in at just under two hours. It felt like he could've kept going for another hour or so, but you takes what you can gets. I had a great time, too bad tickets were so pricey or I'd have gone to all three nights. Otherwise it's a gray, cool, rainy March morning & I'm getting my work on. Finished up work on this lingering thing I was analyzing last week, so now I can focus on this new project I've been assigned to. We've been doing so many quick little emergency and analysis projects lately (along with tons of documentation), it's kind of nice to be doing a proper one for a change. I'm actually looking forward to digging into some code for the first time in a while. The landlord must be doing montly apartment inspections now, as they're coming by tomorrow to do all the units in our building. That means tonight while Erin's at school I have to do some picking up that I didn't get around to last weekend. But it's OK, I'll put on some tunes and get it over with so when Erin gets home we can fix some dinner and hang out. Miss her. Alright, it's time to go get another cup of coffee and dig in to some code. Wheeee.
|