don’t think twice. it’s all right.

My departure for the desert(ed) island has been delayed by a week on account of my computer’s hard drive dying. I should have a new hard drive tomorrow. Is there anyone left on NAP whose laptop hasn’t died in the past year? If not, then back that fucker up now, and regularly.

I saw three concerts this week. Some quick notes off the top of my head.

EDITORS:

Their new album is one of my favorite albums of the year, largely on the strength of the track “Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors” – I thought. Actually, live, I discovered pretty much all their tracks have notable bits, and live also smoothed out the differences between their records. It also emphasized what a solid motherfucker their drummer is which – do we need to emphasize this yet again? probably not, but anyway – is the motherfucking heart of a good rock band.

Unfortunately, there is one big barrier to entry at the live show, which is the theatricality of the front guy, who throws his arms all around, puts them in front of his cheeks, et cetera ad infinitum. I can sometimes take this from people who seem worldly wise or connected to some ethereal wisdom, but he seemed mostly like a dude who’d taken a two-week break from his IT gig answering phones to go tour with his band. Plus he had an instrument. Why not just play your instrument and ROCK and spend less time stupidly emoting? Your songs got all the emotion you need, dude.

A band called Collapsing Cities opened. I basically have no memory of them now even though I saw half their set. Shambling, guitars, I think.

Oh, yeah. Small venue (holds, maybe, 750.)

BLOC PARTY w. CUT OFF YOUR HANDS

Bloc Party have apparently become huge. They played at some several thousand person event center, and it was chock full of the little people. I felt like an old, old man. I had no idea.

A friend of mine from Portland told me he couldn’t get anybody to go see Bloc Party with him when they played there because his friends were all cynical they were a “corporate invention”. I think this is hipster-speak for ‘they seem to be big but my friends don’t listen to them so it must be a conspiracy’, conveniently forgetting that sometimes bands make it big in other countries besides America first. Especially when they’re not American.

Anyway. Cut Off Your Hands (who I’ve previously praised here under their old moniker, The Shaky Hands) opened the show, and I’m proud to say that our local boys managed to impress with their tightly-wound spastic sound, translating to the arena setting much better than I expected. I hope they made some new fans, although judging from the crowd response, it’s possible that a lot of people already knew them. Either way, good on them.

Bloc Party were easily the musical highlight of my week. I hadn’t been sold on the new album, but again, as with the Editors, the live setting shaved off some of the glossiest sheen and exposed its pulsing spastic punk heart underneath the more theatrical trappings. They played every song that I wanted to hear (the joys of seeing a band with two albums doing a headlining set at an arena), and despite going over the top with the flying seizure strobe lights at points, they felt well suited to the arena, a place where I’d rather not see bands in general.

BOB DYLAN AND THE FRAMES.

Barring festivals, this is probably the biggest show I’ve been to since seeing Neil Young and Beck back in 2001 or so. This arena dwarfed the location where Bloc Party played, and my assigned seat near the back of the sold-out house made facial recognition of anyone on stage impossible. I considered being able to determine how many people were onstage a minor triumph. (And no, no video screens.)

Anyway, Dylan was a pretty great cure for feeling young at Bloc Party, because I suspect I was the only under-40 in a five seat radius of me. The Frames opened at 7:30, which if I hadn’t stumbled upon a web page saying that earlier in the day would have meant that I’d have missed them, as the ticket said “Doors 7:30″ and the posters said “8:00″. Anyway, The Frames had a tight half-hour to sell themselves to the world, and did so gloriously. Apart from frontman Glen Hansard’s turn in the movie ONCE which I’ve previously raved about here and a couple listens to their live album SET LIST, I don’t really know their music at all, and they completely ignored the tunes from ONCE in favor of a slowly building set from quiet acousticish pleasantry – verging dangerously close to Coldplay or something but never quite stepping over – into full out rock. They even had a song called “Fitzcarraldo”. Certainly everyone can appreciate how awesome that is, right?

After a brisk 20-minute set change, Dylan started at 8:20. It was pretty rough out of the starting gate, to be frank. He opened with “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35″, more famous as the “everybody must get stoned” song, and managed to drain all the fun and anthemicness out of the song both with the cramped vocal delivery (apparently a monotonous creak is pretty much all he’s capable of) and the shambly unshaped arrangement. I didn’t even recognize it til the end of the second verse. Dylan apparently has decided it’s fun to tour with a garage band that makes lots of mistakes, which I don’t mind in a small club but in an arena it means bad sound without any of the energy you get from this sort of thing in more intimate settings. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” is probably my second favorite Dylan song, but as the second song of the night it was also pretty much a shambles, feeling like a guy desperate to come up with a way to keep a song fresh he’d been playing for 40 years without bothering to keep any of what makes it a beautiful, heartbreaking song.

As the set list rolled on, however, something started clicking. The new songs certainly helped things – after all, they’ve been written for his new voice. A lively version of “Things Have Changed” led into “Tangled Up In Blue”, my favorite Dylan song and one I was simultaneously hoping for and dreading, but he managed to do the original melody as much justice as he could, instead transmogrifying it by switching it into the third person. Which pretty much worked.

Unfortunately the next four songs were distracted by some circus of idiocy in the seats by me involving people who couldn’t or wouldn’t go to their assigned seats because some other people were sitting in them and the ushers being at a loss for what to do. After a squabble that lasted through “Spirit on The Water”, an unrecognizable version of “Highway 61″, “Desolation Row” (which is LONG, how could these people not have worked this out?, and “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine”, the couple sitting in the stairs were escorted away by the ushers to different seats. LITERALLY 30 seconds later, the couple sitting in the contested seats left and never returned for the rest of the night.

Urge to kill … rising …

As if on cure, Dylan ended his set with “Masters of War”. This combined with a forceful two-song encore – “Thunder On The Mountain” and “All Along The Watchtower” – made me think the whole night was worth it.

Next time, if I go, though, I’m bringing binoculars. And possibly a taser.

But no more shows. Now it’s time for the island.