Bob Dylan 960719 in Molde, Norway
From: "Vegard B. Havdal" <vbh@idt.unit.no> Date: 22 Jul 1996 08:31:02 +0200 (thanks to Andersen (I guess!)junior for posting the setlist! Well, just back from my second Dylan show...I did not see the Spektrum show this year, but the reports sounded great... 1.To Be Alone With You great stuff, nice clean rockin. Black boots, Ray ;-) 2.Pretty Peggy-O beautiful if you ask me...very good voice, clear phrasing. 3.All Along The Watchtower boring, JJ was all out of ideas and played dull lead guitar. Bucky on acoustic 6-string through the last verse. 4.Just Like A Woman Nice, he has figured out some guitar licks that work too. Harp. 5.Watching The River Flow Bounced along neatly, and great guitar by Dylan. This was fine. 6.Silvio Also nice.. the new rock riffing that JJ does is great. 7.It´s All Over Now, Baby Blue I was so happy he did this...the sound was scruffy at first, but it was beautiful, and a great experience for me. He ended it with some very impressive chord-soloing, didn't miss a note. 8.Tangled Up In Blue Great too 9.Mr. Tambourine Man Big cheer, and beautiful version. 10.John Brown Wow, a fourth number! JJ on guitar-banjo. This was gripping. 11.Maggie´s Farm Cool version, rockin...well, he grabbed the mike, introduced the band, and I stood hoping he would drop H61 and maybe do 7 days...but then we noticed some diplomacy going on at the stage door, Dylan looked over there, and then back at us, JJ looked puzzled, and it seemed nothing would happen, but then Tony, our hero, shouted out several times 'Come on! Bring him on!' and waving, almost like a cross father! And there he was, walking stiffly on stage for: 12.I Shall Be Released w/ Van Morrison *shudders* Clearly the highlight, some small misses as to who was to sing which verses, but it came out fine. And on the choruses, JJ joined in on harmony vocal..the 'Manuel' part, and it sounded totally awasome. (all off stage) 13.(You Can Make It If You Try) w/Van Morrison oh well, Van is here again! he grabbed Dylan's harp (yuk) and played the intro for the song (guess it was Real Real Gone). And sang as well. It rocked pretty nice. 14.My Back Pages beautiful. 15.Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 16.It Ain´t Me Babe standard...pretty nice harp solo at end. Well, that was it. I think this was one of thge greatest concerts I've been to, and much better than the Spektrum one last year. BTW, the EDLIS tape boot agency badly needs a source for this one! ;-) The Van show on Sunday was strange...at the end he did nothing but make noise and laugh hysterically and mess up other people's choruses. He disappeared quickly, no encores and the guitars were untouched.
Bob Dylan 960719 in Molde, Norway by Karl Erik Audience: 6000 Weather: sunny My second Dylan concert, and I want to tell you about it. The tickets were secured at 0815 on the first day of sale, moons ago. They sold out in a few days, unlike the Oslo concert to be held on the 18th, which was advertised right up until the date. Anyway, the tickets were unnumbered, so you could stand or sit wherever you wanted. The site of the concert was to be the open air stage of the Romsdal Museum in Molde. I think this was to be the first large concert of any kind on this stage. Note: I have later been told that both the Blues Brothers and Little Feat have played sellout concerts here before. Nice, rural surroundings, grass and trees, and if you moved your eyes away from the stage, you would see old wooden cabins of the kind preserved in Norwegian museums. In fact, the local paper said Bob and his party would be using the cottage next to the stage for their dressing room. Would Dylan be favourably influenced by the display of rosepainted chests and cupboards? the paper speculated. I succeeded in talking my wife Johanne and son Greg into accompanying me to the concert. John Erik was to stay home and mind the zoo. We made plans to drive from Mo i Rana to Trondheim on Thursday, that's 500 kilometers, then the next 210 kilometers to Molde on the day of the concert. In Trondheim we made a stop at the cathedral Nidarosdomen, from the thirteenth century, where Jo told me she had previously seen a sculpture she thought looked like Bob. The radio report on Friday morning from the Oslo concert was high praise of Bob, but did not give the full setlist. The Oslo papers I scanned while Jo did the day's driving made the point that the Spektrum was half full and they had to put out enormous grey covers to hide the thousands of empty seats. This in a place that would be filled to the breaking point with Tina Turner fans in a few weeks. "Stingy with the classics", "will never regain his past", "a joke of an instrumentalist", but also "a voice both powerful and wonderful, with a timing approached by noone - except perhaps in jazz". One reviewer informed us of Bob's glamorous red blouse in an otherwise drab concert, said the first hour was not very supple, but towards the end he got closer to the peaks where he belongs, singing "Rainy Day Woman". Obviously a reviewer who had to leave early to catch his deadline. Having eaten along the way, when we got to Molde, we parked near the museum and made our way to the entrance. We arrived at 1415, almost four hours before the concert and two hours before the announced opening of the gates. The local paper had warned that no umbrellas or cameras would be allowed. Also no video or sound recorders. Such items would be confiscated at the gates. There were also pictures of a hooded Dylan embarking from the private jet that had taken the band from Oslo shortly after last night's concert. Front page headline: "BOB HAR LANDET" (you may perhaps translate?). The crowd in front of the white gate was less than ten people, so I felt pretty confident we would be able to find a good spot once inside. Nobody recognized my "Expecting Rain" t-shirt, so I settled with my back to the gate. Closer to opening time, they made a statement that they would be doing spot checks on people's luggage for cameras and alcohol, and those who wanted to could have their bags examined beforehand. - Yeah right! How would anyone then know what had been checked and what not? This I took to mean that people could actually succeed in bringing in cameras. You could maybe hang a camera over your shoulder inside your jacket? There was a woman there who was concerned about the best way to get her flowers in the hands of Bob. The people at the other side of the gate assured her she could place them on stage and everyone would guess who they were intended for. Quarter after four, and the entrance was opened slightly and the trickle started. By this time I did not look back, although I could _feel_ there were several behind me. I saw no searching of the people in front of me, nor did it happen to me. The first couples ran quickly ahead among the wooden cabins, and Greg followed suit. I approached the venue only at a slightly statelier pace. There was the stage, with towers on both sides and a fence in front, already some dozen people standing up against it. There was a grassy incline away from the stage, and on the grassy knoll were the VIP chairs in front of the soundboard. On the grass large sheets of cloth had been laid out to protect the green. There were trees surrounding the whole thing, and also a couple of trees about 15 meters from the stage on both sides. We decided a tree would be a good reference point, and laid out our jackets to sit on and sat on them. Now you understand this was still more than one and a half hour before playtime, and they had sold 6000 tickets. Accordingly, we people who had settled down nicely had to wait for the rest of the input. We sat there watching the river flow. Every 15 minutes or so, the guards came and told everyone to move closer in to the left, seen from the audience. The tree came in handy as an excuse for not being able to move, so we kept our seats. Well anyway, I thought of them as seats, but we were only a few minutes away from six o'clock when people were again squeezed closer, and this time noone sat down again. So this would be a standing experience, after all. Of course, Greg had run to the stage right away, and was camping out with the veterans there. In fact, we did not see him until after the show. Turns out he had been up front for the first three songs, then gone to the trees, but on the left instead of the right. He now claims that he can see his hands up in the air in front of Bob in one of the newspaper photographs. Two cars arrived by the side of the stage, and I recognized Tony Garnier and saw a hood hurrying into the rosepainted room. One final announcement, there would be no photography, except by the professionals up in the VIP chairs, and only for the first two songs. Light beer was NOK 30 (USD 4.50) a can and please enjoy yourselves. Then the familiar (although I had only seen one Bob concert before...) voice: "LaG, WYPW CRA .. BD!!!", and they all came aboard. Now here's the part I dread the most: how can I describe the concert to make you feel you were there? You probably want to know the songs, well the setlist has been posted, I called John Erik around midnight. You want to know how they played and how they looked, and how we felt. - Good, fine, excellent. Anyway, sorry if I mislead you, I cannot give you a song by song description, since I don't remember which impressions go with which song. But it was great. I liked it better than last year's Spektrum concert, the only one which I have a personal basis to compare with. The selection of songs was not great, but above average, and the audience and setting must have made Bob feel OK. He said "Thank you evr'body" between several of the first songs! He gave us harmonica solos, holding a loose mike with his harp, still keeping the guitar on, and he made great movements. During a couple of songs, he kept the guitar pick in his mouth for minutes, preferring to use his fingers on the guitar. My personal favourite up to then was his performance of "John Brown", which really got the message through. There had been speculations of the possibility of a Dylan-Morrison summit since the day it was revealed that Van the Man was booked to play the same stage one day after Bob. And verily, after Maggie's Farm and the introduction of the band there was some commotion, and Tony Garnier directed Bob's attention to a new arrival. Here was Van, the other big name of the Molde Jazz Festival. Both names had been heavily discussed by the jazz people. How could they invite these "pop" (well, OK, Van might be acceptable, but Dylan?) musicians to a jazz festival? The answer of course, money. With 6000 Bob fans and the same number of people the next day to see Van, the festival might avoid too large a loss. Van came on , grabbed his mike and they attempted to cooperate on "I Shall Be Released". Of course the project plan had to be revised after a verse or two, and they each took turns with the verses. Two individuals of such eccentric stature can hardly be expected to sing in unison. But we were happy. This was the moment. The most classic rock meeting in Norway ever! Two legends on the same stage! We had sunshine, we had the month of July, who could ask for anything more? And we got more than most, 125 minutes and 16 songs in all. Bob even came back for "It Ain't Me, Babe" after the two expected encores which I believe were on the setlist. With the car ready to go, he came back and gave a performance talking both through his words and his harmonica and gestures. Did we get the message? Well, maybe, maybe not. He certainly was the one we were looking for. On the way out, Bob gave his harmonica to 10 year old Odne, who was very touched. Bob seemed to like Molde, called it a "snappy little town" according to the papers, and went for a walk in the streets around 4 in the morning (not dark at night, even this far south). We drove very quickly the 100 km to our camping cabin south of the fjord, and made it just before ten , which was the deadline to get in. Greg got to know Sarah, born in Singapore, now a German, and played football with her until very late. The next day we made our car climb the VERY curvy mountain roads of Trollstigen and the "Eagle road" to Geiranger, then inland to Trondheim. We came home Sunday night, and there was a bunch of mail and news to catch up with. When my pictures arrive, I hope to illustrate this story. Thanks for skimming this piece, and Bob if you read this you are welcome back next year! Karl Erik - karlerik@monet.no Expecting Rain - http://www.expectingrain.com/
Tour Dates Calendar Expecting Rain