Bob Dylan Live: Cardiff International Arena 18th June 2004

On Thursday 17^th June 2004 I made my way down to South Wales in order to see Bob Dylan play at the CIA the following night. I had decided that it would be better to drive down the day before and stay at my parents’ flat in Penarth, a pleasant seaside town just to the west of Cardiff and where I had lived for the first six years of my life before rolling up and down the length and breadth of the land due to the work my dad was involved in. Driving down on Thursday evening would ensure avoiding any possible Friday jams on the roads, especially the M25 and upper part of the M4 which could be bastards to deal with if things weren’t looking pretty. It turned out to be a good decision because even taking into account the detour I had to make to my parents’ house in Harpenden in order to pick up the keys to their flat, it still only took me around 3 ½ hours to get to Cardiff.

So much was it a good decision that the only thing I really had to think about on the way down was whether or not I should visit my old friend Rik Dixon whom I hadn’t seen in about three years, possibly four, and who lived in an attic flat in Penarth which he shared with his long term partner Hazel. For quite a long time I sat there behind the wheel of my Nissan weighing up the pros and cons, trying to figure out if it would be a good idea or not to climb those stairs up to Rik’s place, and the further I made my way down the road the more I felt like it would be a good thing to do. On in the background for the duration of the journey was Bob’s far from perfect but still quite likeable Under The Red Sky from 1991, where for me the best songs on it were the title track, Unbelievable, Born In Time, God Knows and, coming in a distant fifth, Cat’s In The Well.

Continue reading →

Bob Dylan Live: Gettin’ My Tickets & Bein’ Burglarized

June 2004 and two Bob shows are coming up. It seemed like it was not so very long ago that I had finished writing up Three Bob Shows which covered the three bob shows that I had been to in 2003; Sheffield, Birmingham and London in that order. Great shows, naturally, although I have to admit that I did get into a couple of scrapes along the way, which led me to believe at times I was getting a bit of beating from the gods and that I’d better learn to stay on the right side of the road. Enough of that for now, suffice to say that I just about managed to come out of it with the sun still shining brightly over my shoulder as far as my love of Bob was concerned and at the end of the day that was all that mattered.

Early June, hay fever season, a bit of a distraction for me at some points to say the least, because on a bad day I can suffer from it pretty badly, flat on my back for hours and hours on end. Guess you just have to keep on riding with head held high, despite the fact I get up some mornings feeling like I have been boxed around the around the ears, walking around whilst sneezing continuously all the way to the coffee machine in the kitchen. No doubt whatsoever that I am looking forward to the 2004 shows, which will be numbers 22 & 23 respectively as far as my precious list of Bob concerts are concerned. Looking forward to upcoming Bob shows can be for me like seeing visions of glory, but having never done anything glorious in my life it is not possible for me to accurately define or describe what those visions might actually be. The main thing was that there was no way I would not be making it to them, only if strange lightning struck, or if some other such particular act of fate came along to cut through me like a knife.

Continue reading →

Bob Dylan Live: Five Never Ending Tour Shows 2013 – 2019

Following on from my overview of Bob shows from the 1990s and also shows in the period 2005 – 2009, this post covers me seeing Bob Dylan live at the Tempodrom, Berlin on two dates in 2013, the Royal Albert Hall in London 2015, the Cardiff Interantional Arena 2017 and finally Hyde Park, London 2019.

It was to be just over two years later when I next saw Bob by way of going to two shows in Germany on October 24^th & October 26^th 2013 at the Tempodrom in Berlin. Just so happened that I was over there paying a visit to my old friend Thomas Deilecke. The tickets had been bought well in advance of my visit and I guess they were the main reason why was I was making the trip over there, not solely of course, because it was great meeting up once again with Thomas, but Bob was most definitely in my sights, no doubt about that. He was actually playing an unbroken three night stint at the Tempodrom, a concert hall in the middle of Berlin built in the fashion and shape of a circus tent, and we had tickets for the first night and the third.

Continue reading →

Bob Dylan Live: Seven Never Ending Tour Shows 2005 – 2011

Following on from my brief overview of Bob shows which I went to in the 1990s, this post covers me going to see Bob Dylan play live at on three occasions at the Brixton Academy in 2005, once at Wenbley Arena in 2007, once at the London Roundhouse in 2009 and finally a brace of shows at the Cardiff International Arena in 2009 and 2011.

In writing about Bob Dylan Live post 2006 mention first has to be made of the three Brixton Academy shows I saw Bob play in November 2005. For some reason I did not write these up at the time so they didn’t make it into Carnival Of Jesters, my 2000 – 2006 live show write ups, although of course they should have. It is an anomaly which now nearly fifteen years later I can’t really explain, other than to say it was probably the case that work at Wisdom Books must have been pretty stressful at the time. This would no doubt have made the prospect of writing up reports on those three shows beyond my capabilities, which is strange because I know that I really enjoyed them. Needless to say it is way too far down the line now for me to remember them in any great detail, beyond running through the set lists which I have recently had to refer back to.

Continue reading →

Bob Dylan Live: Cardiff International Arena 23rd September 2000

This show is from September 2000 when I went on the road in the UK to attend 5 shows by Colombia recording artist Bob Dylan who by that point was over 10 years into his Never Ending Tour.

After Sheffield I had to get down to South Wales the next day to see Bob Dylan at the Cardiff International Arena with my old friend Huw Jones who came from the same place as me, namely Penarth, a pleasant town on the western edge of Cardiff and overlooking the Bristol Channel. Unlike me Huw had never really left, apart from a few years down in Swansea doing an apprenticeship in stained glass window making. In fact it had been in Swansea when I had first got to know him, way back in the early 80s when I was studying at the University of Swansea and from where in 1983 I emerged with a 2:1 BA Hons degree in History, something which at the time I was quite rightly extremely proud of. Huw was not studying at the university of course, but had been doing his stained glass apprenticeship down in Swansea Bay and living in a cold bedsit located in an area of town called Morriston. He used to come to the Students Union coffee lounge and play the pinball machines there night after night, and where I have to say he got to be a bit of a wizard. Due to his almost continuous presence it was not long before I started to hang out with him, along with a guy called Rik Dixon who was from Norwich and a fellow student of mine in the university. Over the course of the next few years the three of us had more than one or two high old times together, when more often than not we were under the influence of weed, hash and other assorted psychedelic drugs. But all that I guess, is a different story!

Continue reading →