Labor Day weekend (eep, seems long ago already) brought the annual carnival of music, film, comedy, visual arts, API's Flatstock, to Seattle. And did I mention music? In the past, I've gone all three days. And in the further past, I've flown in from out of town for the festival. (That would have been during the sleater-kinney Can Do No Wrong Era.) This year, I upped for one day, primarily to see Bob Dylan.
I probably heard Dylan's music in utero; he's far and away my mom's favorite musician. She's seen him perform in four consecutive decades beginning with the '70s, so has plenty of experience with the diffident stage persona, reworking of material and general unintelligibility of his unpredictable gigs. I, with no such history and just armed with reviews I've read of shows over the past several years, went in with modest expectations. Rolling Thunder Revue it wasn't going to be. And it wasn't. There were no songs from Desire, after all.
I didn't think he was going to be wheeled up on stage a la Sun Ra in the early 90s but wasn't really sure what to expect. Then the band hit the downbeat of "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" and a great wave of nostalgia flooded through me. There I was. And there Dylan was, decked out his mariachi-influenced stage get-up. The set list was a ricocheting pinball of folk rock pillars from the '60s and '70s with a few cuts from his recent catalog renaissance. "Highway 61 Revisited," "Simple Twist of Fate," "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," "Ballad of a Thin Man." The soundtrack to my childhood laid out before me.
Memorial Stadium on the grounds of Seattle Center has negative acoustics, if such a thing exists. To outshine the so-so PA rattling around a concrete stadium pretty much only used for high school football championship games these days, performers need to have ridiculous stage presence, Northwest power rock crunch or a singer whose voice can cut glass. Three years ago, Gossip and Beth Ditto pulled it off with 2.5 out of 3. Supporting Dylan, the Decemberists were a little lost, though the magnificent tale of infanticide, "The Rake's Song," sounded delicious. Local girl -- well, from Tacoma -- Neko Case had the pipes at times to one-up the Memorial Stadium sound.
Dylan had none of the above, save himself. His voice was, in a word, shot. The band sounded alright. Inspired in moments, going through the motions in others. One-time guitar wunderkind Charlie Sexton strutted around to a certain extent though knew when to yield center stage when Dylan came out from behind the keyboard he played a majority of the night. I'd say if you weren't super-familiar with the songs, you might have been totally lost or bored, though all around me seemed to know all the lyrics. But still, it was Dylan. And when he blew what can only be termed a wailing harp solo during "Tangled Up in Blue" it might as well have been 1976. In the passing days I had this odd sensation of thinking I should have been more disappointed in the show and simultaneously wanting to have liked it more. That feeling really hasn't dissipated. Probably will wind up being the only time I see him perform so I can say, "I saw Dylan" and not a night I'll soon forget.
Three nights later and a world away in nearly every respect, San Francisco-based singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek played in the Great Hall of Seattle's Town Hall, an acoustic marvel
dating back nearly 90 years. Mark brings back a different thread of personal history and nostalgia. I first heard his band Red House Painters as I was beginning the end of my years in New York City (and the East Coast as it turned out) and pointed my shoes towards the Bay Area. In the intervening 15-plus years, I've seen Mark perform in all guises: as RHP, solo acoustic and electric, and (shockingly) with a full band as Sun Kil Moon.
He's grown older more gracefully than he would want to admit or likely hear anyone say. The song-by-song retuning of his guitar is still a character in all his performances. But the between song patter isn't full of his barely-veiled racist and overtly misogynistic rants any longer. He accused the seated crowd of being "middle aged" and worried about our mortgages, bragged about upcoming tickets to see the reunited doom metal band Sleep, yet let slip that he's now 43....smack in the middle of middle age himself. In other tacit and overt nods to his age, he had a stack of lyric sheets at his feet, and the parlor trick of stepping away from the mic stand and singing out unamplified isn't part of his routine any longer either.
Supporting a new album of originals under the Sun Kil Moon banner (Admiral Fell Promises) -- though it seems the album is just the man and his guitar -- Mark played a crisp set that was nearly exclusively SKM tunes. He broke out the haunting "Duk Koo Kim" way too early as the second song in, though kept major artillery for late in the set sandwiching RHP's "Katy Song" between "Carry Me, Ohio" and the majestic "Heron Blue." Mark's songs won't move generations, but are often perfectly limned portraits of people and, especially, places. Red House Painters' sublime "San Geronimo" is a picture post card to the "lost summers of my youth." [Some day, I'll be in the audience when he plays this.] Fast-forward 15 years and "Half Moon Bay" from his newest release paints another melancholy portrait of an oceanside Bay Area town; this time told in the present tense.
I certainly don't go see the quantity of live shows that I used to. I've long stated I'd stop going when it wasn't fun anymore. It's still fun; at least these two recent experiences were, though I wonder if, like Mark, I'm starting to show some age whether or not I want to admit it. Then again, next month none other than Corin Tucker bows her eponymous band and debut solo record. I don't think that will be so quiet.
I probably heard Dylan's music in utero; he's far and away my mom's favorite musician. She's seen him perform in four consecutive decades beginning with the '70s, so has plenty of experience with the diffident stage persona, reworking of material and general unintelligibility of his unpredictable gigs. I, with no such history and just armed with reviews I've read of shows over the past several years, went in with modest expectations. Rolling Thunder Revue it wasn't going to be. And it wasn't. There were no songs from Desire, after all.
I didn't think he was going to be wheeled up on stage a la Sun Ra in the early 90s but wasn't really sure what to expect. Then the band hit the downbeat of "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" and a great wave of nostalgia flooded through me. There I was. And there Dylan was, decked out his mariachi-influenced stage get-up. The set list was a ricocheting pinball of folk rock pillars from the '60s and '70s with a few cuts from his recent catalog renaissance. "Highway 61 Revisited," "Simple Twist of Fate," "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," "Ballad of a Thin Man." The soundtrack to my childhood laid out before me.
Memorial Stadium on the grounds of Seattle Center has negative acoustics, if such a thing exists. To outshine the so-so PA rattling around a concrete stadium pretty much only used for high school football championship games these days, performers need to have ridiculous stage presence, Northwest power rock crunch or a singer whose voice can cut glass. Three years ago, Gossip and Beth Ditto pulled it off with 2.5 out of 3. Supporting Dylan, the Decemberists were a little lost, though the magnificent tale of infanticide, "The Rake's Song," sounded delicious. Local girl -- well, from Tacoma -- Neko Case had the pipes at times to one-up the Memorial Stadium sound.
Dylan had none of the above, save himself. His voice was, in a word, shot. The band sounded alright. Inspired in moments, going through the motions in others. One-time guitar wunderkind Charlie Sexton strutted around to a certain extent though knew when to yield center stage when Dylan came out from behind the keyboard he played a majority of the night. I'd say if you weren't super-familiar with the songs, you might have been totally lost or bored, though all around me seemed to know all the lyrics. But still, it was Dylan. And when he blew what can only be termed a wailing harp solo during "Tangled Up in Blue" it might as well have been 1976. In the passing days I had this odd sensation of thinking I should have been more disappointed in the show and simultaneously wanting to have liked it more. That feeling really hasn't dissipated. Probably will wind up being the only time I see him perform so I can say, "I saw Dylan" and not a night I'll soon forget.
Three nights later and a world away in nearly every respect, San Francisco-based singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek played in the Great Hall of Seattle's Town Hall, an acoustic marvel
dating back nearly 90 years. Mark brings back a different thread of personal history and nostalgia. I first heard his band Red House Painters as I was beginning the end of my years in New York City (and the East Coast as it turned out) and pointed my shoes towards the Bay Area. In the intervening 15-plus years, I've seen Mark perform in all guises: as RHP, solo acoustic and electric, and (shockingly) with a full band as Sun Kil Moon.
He's grown older more gracefully than he would want to admit or likely hear anyone say. The song-by-song retuning of his guitar is still a character in all his performances. But the between song patter isn't full of his barely-veiled racist and overtly misogynistic rants any longer. He accused the seated crowd of being "middle aged" and worried about our mortgages, bragged about upcoming tickets to see the reunited doom metal band Sleep, yet let slip that he's now 43....smack in the middle of middle age himself. In other tacit and overt nods to his age, he had a stack of lyric sheets at his feet, and the parlor trick of stepping away from the mic stand and singing out unamplified isn't part of his routine any longer either.
Supporting a new album of originals under the Sun Kil Moon banner (Admiral Fell Promises) -- though it seems the album is just the man and his guitar -- Mark played a crisp set that was nearly exclusively SKM tunes. He broke out the haunting "Duk Koo Kim" way too early as the second song in, though kept major artillery for late in the set sandwiching RHP's "Katy Song" between "Carry Me, Ohio" and the majestic "Heron Blue." Mark's songs won't move generations, but are often perfectly limned portraits of people and, especially, places. Red House Painters' sublime "San Geronimo" is a picture post card to the "lost summers of my youth." [Some day, I'll be in the audience when he plays this.] Fast-forward 15 years and "Half Moon Bay" from his newest release paints another melancholy portrait of an oceanside Bay Area town; this time told in the present tense.
I certainly don't go see the quantity of live shows that I used to. I've long stated I'd stop going when it wasn't fun anymore. It's still fun; at least these two recent experiences were, though I wonder if, like Mark, I'm starting to show some age whether or not I want to admit it. Then again, next month none other than Corin Tucker bows her eponymous band and debut solo record. I don't think that will be so quiet.
