Under a week until Van the Man at the Phil. Might not do much patter between songs, and you'll never get him doing a 3 hour set like Springsteen, but when he's on blob he's spellbinding. Always has top quality musicians playing with him. Orchestrates them like a little Hitler. The best thing though I think is you never know what you're going to get, performs each song differently every time he plays it, the free jazz influence from his youth. There's not many that do this, and it's what makes a gig magical in my opinion. It helps that he's learned lots of instruments. Too many acts perform each song exactly the same which is a shame. I wonder how it doesn't drive them nuts!
I hope these older musicians such as Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Van Morrison, Randy Newman remain alive and tour for as long as possible, from a purely personal and selfish point of view, there'll never be another generation as talented and original as theirs.
I'll shut up now!
