Bob shows

Just wondering what people are making of the recent shows, having just seen Bob in Sheffield, UK.

Personally, I thought Bob and the band were pretty focussed and into it - they certainly seemed to want to deliver the goods. After a rockin 'Cat's', we had a satisfying version of 'Baby Blue', with some good organ from Bob - up in the mix and to the point, rather than the usual inaudible part. After a superb 'Things Have Changed', and the previously-unheard-by-me 'Sugar Baby' and 'Poor Boy', I had big grin and was thinking this could be one of the best.

But, the second half of the show was a little patchy. It dipped a bit with 'Make You Feel ML', and then a couple of songs were arranged in rather a heavy, unsubtle way, 'Highway 61', for example, and to a lesser extent 'Love Sick'. On the way to Sheffield, I'd remarked to a friend that Bob should drop 'LARS' and 'AATW' for a year or two, I figured they were played so often they'd become stale. But I was proved wrong by a revitalised 'LARS', that was probably the best version I've seen him do. I like 'BITW' to finish a show, so was happy it happened that way, and the new arrangement is a good 'un.

The other thing that occurred to me was that the soloing was pretty uninspired at times - Denny the culprit.

Any thoughts, folks?

Stiff little man from Minnesota upstaged by prima drumma. Marionette Performance by four (or five) guitarists. Are the keyboards actually plugged in?

Edinburgh 3 May 2009

Having stated my hatred of 'reviews' which detail Friends We Met And What We Bloody Ate before a brief description of Being In The Presence Of *His (flaming) B@bness* here are my Embra thoughts:

We left Strathaven at 1600 and drove to Hamilton to pick up Big Jim, an 8 mile (14km) journey, then on to Edinburgh, a total of 50 miles (80km), arriving at around 1730.
Parked on the street in the Georgian 'New Town' - free on a Sunday - and walked for 15 minutes to the Café Royal bar where I had a cider, Hazel an orange juice with lemonade (no ice) and Jim a pint of I.P.A. (India Pale Ale). We ordered food: Jim and I split half a dozen oysters and both had fish pie, while Hazel went for a mozarella and sun-dried tomato sandwich with fries and salad. Hazel had a coffee and Jim and I repeated our drink order.
We then walked a further 10 minutes to the Playhouse (a lovely Victorian theatre holding about 3000 people) arriving at 1900, where we attended a concert. When we came out at 2150 it was dark (earlier it had been light). We walked back to the car and drove to Strathaven via Hamilton, the total milage being almost exactly 100.

But the weather John, how was the weather?

Glasgow I really enjoyed.
Edinburgh was dry.