Rockefeller, Oslo
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Your Mind & We Belong Together |
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Last time Love played in Oslo, they played at John Dee, which is sorta like Rockefeller's little brother because they're situated in the same building, wall-to-wall. That concert was totally sold out. The Rockefeller concert wasn't sold out (Rockefeller has a 1400 people capacity, and my guess is that was around 1000-1100 people present). Doors opened at 9 pm, Love took the stage at 10.30 pm. I was a bit worried about how they'd pull off only being a 5 piece without keyboards, strings & horns. Luckily, it turned out great, thanks to Mike Randle being a good guitar-player, Rusty getting a cool Byrds-ish sound out of his Rickenbacker(?) guitar and Arthur Lee still has a pretty decent voice despite him closing in on the 60- year mark. Started off with Your Mind & We, which got the crowd going. Had it not been for the re-release of "Forever Changes" which included this song, very few would've recognized it. But it was good. Alone Again Or was amazing, Andmoreagain was close to the original, and 7 & 7 Is basically rocked Everybody! On Old Man, Arthur Lee had to use a lyrics sheet. Good thing he did, because that song was easily one of the highlights of the concert, and one of the best vocals Arthur ever did this night. Following it was an ultralong version of A House is Not A Motel with an extended coda with Arthur's harmonica & Mike's lead guitar ripping solos. Everybody's Gotta Live w/ Instant Karma followed, and was ok. Orange Skies was good, The Red Telephone was extended and Arthur proclaimed his objects of hate: " I wonder who it'll be tomorrow, Michael Jackson or me" received hilarious reactions from the audience, Martha Stewart and George W Bush also got their critique, and towards the end Arthur said about Bush "He is a motherfucking fraud". August was next, it was short, so I don't remember much of it. And then came the only song from their self-titled debut album: Signed DC was long with Arthur using the harmonica again on the coda. Bummer In The Summer was a bit heavier than the original. After Bummer, Arthur said: "Now we'll take a request". Someone shouted out loud "Hey Joe", but Arthur said "we could've done it, but Mike thinks our version sucks". So he introduced Rainbow In The Storm as a new song, based on the book of the same name that someone wrote (don't remember who, but he said who it was by). This song got the least reaction by the crowd, because it's relatively unknown. You Set The Scene was next, and the version was fantastic. Mike did a great job on this one, transferring the string arr into his guitar-playing. And Mike was the guitar-hero of the evening: On the following Live & Let Live, he played a tremendous Hendrix-inspired solo which got enormous response from the audience. Singing Cowboy was the last song of the ordinary set, and it was extended because in the middlesection, Arthur did a band introduction, where everyone got to play a solo on their respective instruments. Then they did a short break. The first encore was The Daily Planet. Heavier than the original (in fact, most of the songs played live tonight were heavier than the originals) and quite good. The last encore was Between Clark & Hilldale which ended the concert on a positive note, 1 hour and 45 mins after it started. So, they played all of Forever Changes (except Good Humour Man), 2 from Da Capo (Orange Skies,7&7Is) and only 1 from Love (Signed DC). That's my only complaint really: They could've played Little Red Book, Mushroom Clouds and My Flash On You. They also could've played Stephanie Knows Who and She Comes In Colors, but you can't always get what you want, huh? The crowd was mostly good. Wide range in age: From girls barely turned 18 to people well in their 60's. Good mood mostly (the only stupid thing was that during Bummer, someone tried throwing a half-full cup of beer on stage, but fortunately missed) But all in all, it was a very good gig, and it might've been the last time Love came to Oslo. Thomas
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