Dancing about Architecture

My girlfriend and I went to this last night.

I’m not up to writing a full review, but:

“I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face”, as performed by Paul was great. (And touching as hell under the circumstances—Laurie was wiping tears from her eyes and clearly she didn’t know ahead of time that Paul would be playing it.)

(Musicals were a recurrent theme of the evening. Besides “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” from My Fair Lady, “Till There Was You” from The Music Man was performed (by John Eller).)

Also great was some song with the lyrics “she’s a goddamn angel” and something about her “husband in Hell”. Is this a new Westerberg song? (A Gram Parsons song??)  The lyrics are kind of like an inverted version of the lyrics of the Tim version of “Can’t Hardly Wait”: “I’ll be sad in Heaven/You won’t follow me there”.

Paul and a bunch of others played an awesome (extremely awesome) version of the Stones’ “Loving Cup”. (Paul’s left hand seems to have recovered from the screwdriver-candle-cleaning incident—he played some decent guitar solos on “Loving Cup”.) Paul was totally getting into this song and John Eller played really good keyboards on it.

The Zuzu’s Petals songs were excellent. Laurie was completely happy performing, Linda is an awesome drummer (she played drums for almost everyone that night), and it was fun watching Coleen bop around.

Other than P.W. and Zuzu’s Petals, the main musical highlight was an amazing vocal performance by Lori Barbero (of Babes in Toyland) on some song that I don’t know the name of. Whatever song it was that she played, it was an amazing minimalist arrangement: just distorted, feedbacking guitar, Lori’s vocals, and Lori’s foot slamming down on the bass drum pedal.

Also great was the closing performance of “Daydream Believer” by everybody.

I had my copy of Petal Pusher signed by Laurie after the show. I didn’t want to reveal myself to her as some kind of “Paul worshipper”, so I didn’t say much to her, which I now regret. I could have at least told her that I loved the book.

This was a really good show. It was in a fairly small place, this old ballroom. Glenn Tilbrook played some really great guitar solos. Jools Holland sang this one really good slow song that I didn’t know. I know it’s not on any Squeeze album, so maybe it’s on one of his solo albums. Chris’ voice sounded really hoarse and he only sang lead on a couple of songs (I know he doesn’t sing lead very much anyway, but still.)

Next Sunday, I’m seeing Hüsker Dü here in Madison.

Set list in mixed-up order, except where indicated

• “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)” (first)
• “Goodbye Girl”
• “Cool for Cats”
• “Take Me I’m Yours”
• “If I Didn’t Love You”
• “Is That Love”
• “Messed Around”
• “Black Coffee in Bed” (last before encores)
• “Annie Get Your Gun”
• “No Place Like Home”
• “Hourglass”
• “Footprints”
• “The Prisoner”
• “Trust Me to Open My Mouth”
• “Striking Matches”
• “The Waiting Game”
• “Tempted” (last)

I saw Bob Dylan tonight at Mayo Field here in Rochester. I wish I could say that there was something particularly memorable about tonight’s concert. Something different from the half-dozen other shows I’ve seen from the Never-Ending Tour over the last decade or so. But there wasn’t. If he had done one of the following, I would have been happy: (1) played some songs (or a song, even) from Modern Times (which I think is great), (2) played that rocking version of “The Drifter’s Escape” that he’s played often during the Never-Ending tour, that version where you don’t even recognize what song it is or what words he’s singing until he gets to the “my feet I swear they’re burning” part. But he didn’t play any songs from the new album and he didn’t play “Drifter’s Escape”, either. (The one sort of highlight by omission was that he didn’t play “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” for a change.)

I don’t know why he didn’t play any of the new songs. Maybe he doesn’t trust us to know any of them yet. But that sort of thing never used to bother him.

Anyway, maybe I’ll go see him in St. Paul later this fall and he’ll play some of the new songs then. He plays keyboards through the whole show now (I think—I sat down during a few songs and couldn’t see over the people in front of me and maybe he picked up guitar on some of those, but I don’t think so). Anyway, I like the fact that he’s playing keyboard, not guitar. It’s like when he started out with the Golden Chords (hi, Leroy!) in Hibbing. And he really seems to enjoy playing with this band and just letting them rock out and play long, rocking guitar solos and stuff. Like they’re the sort of band he enjoyed playing in when he was in high school and his ambition was to “join Little Richard”.

So, anyway, I came up with this idea. I think when he plays in St. Paul, he should first play all the songs on Modern Times from start to finish. And then, he should play nothing but Little Richard songs after that. Moreover, he should dump that cheesy, white keyboard thing and play everything on an old Steinway K-52 upright (a pre-CBS sellout model). (Maybe he can see whether Jimmy Yancey’s old piano is on the market.) I suppose he plays that cheesy, white keyboard standing up because the audience can see him better. But, hey, you can’t see anyone in the Xcel (sp?) Center, anyway, so he could just sit behind that big old Steinway upright and pound away. Nothing but Little Richard tunes (and “Workingman Blues #2” from the new album). And then just to throw everyone really off he should do that Ricky Nelson song, “Lonesome Town”, as an encore, like he used to do in the 80s. Now that’s a concert I’d love to see.