The Freewheelin Nick & Kimbo

During our trip to New York I dragged Kimbo down to Greenwich Village to hunt down Bob Dylan's early Sixties apartment on West 4th street, so we could recreate the 'Freewheelin Bob Dylan' cover photo of Dylan and Suze Rotolo walking arm in arm.
Unfortunately, no snow (or a conventiently parked VW van) but kudos to Gerry for risking life and limb by lying on the road to get the photo angle.

Tribute to the Music of Bruce Springsteen - Carnegie Hall, New York

During an extended Easter break in New York - I managed to score a couple of tickets to the Springsteen tribute at Carnegie Hall. As a reasonably famous venue, I was pretty excited to finally see somethine at Carnegie Hall. It did have amazing acoustics and viewing sightlines - even from our fairly high-up seats.

The line-up was a bit fluid for this charity concert - raising funds for Music for Youth an organisation dedicated to funding music programmes for disadvanted and undeprivalidges kids.

Overall the show was fantastic - I've included the full set details below - but my highlights were:

Steve Earle - looking very much like Allen Ginsburg, kicking things off with "Nebraska". The Surprise appearance of Patti Smith with "Because The Night". Marah, including a guest on bagpipes, with a rollicking "The Rising" - good to see some contemporary Bruce material represented. Juliana Hatfield performing "Cover Me" solo on electric guitar, which really emphasised the vulnrability in the lyrics. Pete Yorn's solo acoustic "Dancing In The Dark" which emphasised the dark over the dancing. Odetta delivering a dryly comic "57 Channels" from her wheelchair. Highlight for me was The Hold Steady's main set closing "Altantic City" where they managed to walk the line of staying true to the original, but also stamping their own style on it - in particular turning the "last night I met a guy and I'm gonna do a little favor for him" line into a mantra.

The encore featured a surprise appearance from Springsteen himself - in great form, joking "The good news is, I'm still alive," explaining that the evening felt like the kind of dream where you watch people talk about you, then discover you're at your own funeral. After a great acoustic version of "The Promised Land" and an abbreviated acoustic "Rosalita" where Springsteen abandoned the verses to bring the story up-to-date. Amongst the other highlights: the hero got the girl, broke up his band to sing happy songs which no one liked, put the band back together to sing sad songs which made everyone happy.

All the nights performers, including house band Elysian Fields then came back from a reprise of "Rosalita" which saw Craig Finn of The Hold Steady, Badly Drawn Boy, and Jesse Malin all trading verese with Bruce. A fitting, if ramshackle end, to a fantastic night.

The full line-up was as follows:
Nebraska - Steve Earle
Streets of Philadelphia - The Bacon Brothers
Streets of Fire - Elysian Fields
The River - Josh Ritter
Because the Night - Patti Smith
The Rising - Marah
My City of Ruins - Holmes Brothers with the Young People’s Chorus of New York City
Brilliant Disguise - Robin Holcomb
Jersey Girl - Jersey Guys with Bobby Valli
Spirit in the Night - North Mississippi All-Stars
New York City Serenade - Uri Caine
Cover Me - Juliana Hatfield
One Step Up - Low Stars
Thunder Road - Badly Drawn Boy
Born in the U.S.A. - Joseph Arthur
Dancing in the Dark - Pete Yorn
Hungry Heart - Jesse Malin with Ronnie Spector
I’m Goin’ Down - M. Ward
57 Channels - Odetta
Atlantic City - The Hold Steady
The Promised Land (acoustic) - Bruce Springsteen
Rosalita (acoustic) - Bruce Springsteen
Rosalita (full-band) - Bruce Springsteen with all performers

Kaiser Chiefs - Royal Festival Hall

Caught a great Friday night show with The Kaiser Chiefs at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall as part of a week-long Teenage Cancer Trust series of concerts. I’ve really been digging their recently released second album ‘Yours Truly, Angry Mob’ so it was great to hear some of the new songs live.

The show kicked off with a few employments tracks “Saturday Night” (with one of my favorite Kaiser Chief’s lines: “we are Birds of a Feather / and you can be the fat one”) and “Everyday I Love You Less and Less”.

Before they jumped into the new material. The seemingly ubiquitous first single “Ruby” went down a treat, but I really enjoyed “Heat Dies Down” and “Highroyds”. Also great to hear the not often played b-side “Take My Temperature”.

I was a bit surprised having a new album to draw from didn’t change the set dramatically from the earlier ‘Employment’ show we saw at Brixton Academy last year – but I guess having only two albums to draw from still limits the song selection somewhat.

My only criticism of the night was how poorly the venue seemed to suit the majority of the crowd. We might have been unlucky, but seemed to be flanked in boxes on either side of our own by drunk bankers/accountants. It may have more to do with this being a Friday night show – so many people simply kicked-on from after work drinks, however I do suspect having a top 10 hit (the aforementioned “Ruby”) does lead to a band drawing a less selective audience (case in point, one of the “bankers” to our right, who at one stage decided to go topless, continued to call out for “ruby, ruby, ruby” despite the band having already played the song).
Anyway – this minor criticism aside, the show was great and much of the new material – in particular the title track “Angry Mob” which opened the only encore – sounded just fantastic in live performance.