****17/10/07 Saenger Theatre, Mobile AL Show*****

[blackisthelight]

SETLIST:


Hey all,
Is there anyone planning on attending the show in Mobile? I'm a new registree here, by the way. My name is Andrew.

[Sydneyfan]

Hi Andrew, welcome to TBY.

[Sydneyfan]

Let's hope for a tantrum free zone tonight and a really good show.

[ewok.online]

Let's hope for a tantrum free zone tonight and a really good show.

:upyours

[foggy]

I'm a new registree here, by the way. My name is Andrew.

Hi Andrew. Welcome to the board. :wave

[Sydneyfan]

This should have started now....

[ewok.online]

This should have started now....

or he skipped getting pissed off and did a preemptive storm off.

[Sydneyfan]

or he skipped getting pissed off and did a preemptive storm off.

:lol It cuts out the middle man I guess.

[raer7385]

:boring

[Sydneyfan]

Best show thread ever :upyours

[ArkhamAsylum]

:guitarsolo :guitarsolo





Or not.....

[burgerqueen]

wow, still no updates? Odd.

[raer7385]

maybe everyone's face has been melted................hopefully?!

[Sydneyfan]

I am getting worried about Alabama now.

[Sydneyfan]

Oh goody, they are still alive...


2 1/2 hour set. It rocked w/ plenty of jamming.

Set list as I recall (in no particular order)

Peaceful Valley
Magnolia Mountain
Bartering Lines
Goodnight Rose



Dear John
Wild Flowers
Rescue Blues

The End

Night Birds
Kiss Before I go
Beautiful Sorta
Easy Plateau
Cold roses


Two
Everybody Knows
Off Broadway (awesome jammed up version)
I taught myself how to grow old

And more (just got back and am tired).........

**Some people shouted things out, but the rest of the crowd was quick to jump on them. It was certainly: "Don't screw this up for us."
The Sanger seats just under two thousand, very intimate.

courtesy of wdanders

[Sydneyfan]

What an unbelievable show. People started with the yells about 5 songs in and he said "oh, so it's gonna be one of those nights... i can already tell this is gonna be a long set." Then he made a great statement about how people have their minds made up about the show before they get there so they miss out of half the gig waiting for their one song. he said it was like they're playing bingo and they have this number and they're sitting there waiting for it to get called but they're not paying attention and enjoying the game. Then he said that it was our show and that we should police ourselves and it was up to us how the night went.

Other than that his banter incuded a rap song that he started the show with about Mobile. Then he told a story about how to of his siblings were born there and that he was 5 days away from being born there but his mom decided to randomly go back to Carolina.

The show was amazing. Especially "Peaceful Valley". Neal had this Robbie Robertson thing going on that I was digging. haha. I love how they expand all of the songs to like 10 minutes.

The set list posted seems right. The order is messed up, but I'm fuzzy on that as well. Except that the encore was "two, everybody knows, and easy plateau". Also the "this is the part where we pretend to leave and then we come back out for an encore, so everybody play along" part was funny. Then they all just layed on stage for short nap and got back up. haha. After they got back up everyone bumrushed the stage.

from deadend

[raer7385]

either ryan is fucknut insane or he just really likes to stir controversy when leaving shows abruptly. one day horrible show, next day great..... wtf? thank God my mood swings aren't that intense.

[hildegoat]

from deadend
Neal had this Robbie Robertson thing going on that I was digging.

They didn't turn off his mic during the show because he can't sing, did they? That's the only Robbie Robertson "thing" that comes to mind. :P

[burgerqueen]

I like his little thing about missing the show - it's a good point.

[Faded Rose]

either ryan is fucknut insane or he just really likes to stir controversy when leaving shows abruptly. one day horrible show, next day great..... wtf? thank God my mood swings aren't that intense.

You said it man....

Sounds like a good show.

[sws305]

Hey guys, I'm old school from the old .org board but haven't posted much of anything since that went down, but this was my third Ryan show, and it was the best one ever. I've seen him play a polished, hit driven, crowd pleaser set at the Ryman, I've seen him explode at a noisy House of Blues crowd in New Orleans, and now I've seen him play a perfect show. Ryan was funny, and dead on musically. The jams were awesome, his guitar playing (and the Cardinals, my God are they amazing) was incredible. He played Rescue Blues which I did not expect once he realized the crowd was into him (after the bingo remark). The crowd was awesome, anytime somebody yelled "COME PICK ME UP!" they quickly got repremanded by the majority of the fans. They did their break before the encore by lying on the stage in napping positions, which was funny. Two and a half hours, awesome AWESOME show! Not to mention I saw him at a bar down the street from my house the night before and he played some of his more hilarious unknown numbers at the open mic night and hung out for a minute with the Cards then left when people realized it was him and started asking for autographs and bugging him. Ryan has made my year by coming to Mobile. And based on the amount of fun it looked like he was having, and the length of the set, and the crowd reaction -- it's rare for a saenger theatre crowd to get out of their seats and make it standing only on the floor which they did for the encore -- I hope he'll come back.

What an amazing two days.

[Sydneyfan]

Thanks for the review, sounds great :upyours

[littleamen]

or he skipped getting pissed off and did a preemptive storm off.

At least he'd skip teasing them with the possibility of a mind blowing show......nothing like cutting to the chase

[littleamen]

:upyours

That sounds awesome sws...thanks for the review!!

[Sydneyfan]

Ryan reigns at the Saenger

Thursday, October 18, 2007
By LAWRENCE SPECKER
Entertainment Reporter

If there's a singer/songwriter sin that Ryan Adams hasn't been accused of, it's hard to think of it: His baggage includes charges of self-indulgence, artistic inconsistency and admitted heavy drug abuse, not to mention oversensitivity to critics, audiences and the challenges of public performances.

It's enough to make you wonder why so many people keep picking him out as the next big thing in serious rock. But then he pops up with a concert like the one he delivered Wednesday night at the Mobile Saenger Theatre, and you see exactly why.

Enough people were on hand that only the theater's upper balcony remained open. The turnout was all the more impressive considering that Adams has little to show in the way of hit singles or gold records.

The crowd was in for a focused performance that seemed to belie all the tales of onstage meltdowns. Adams and his band, the Cardinals, found a potent groove and stuck to it.

Through the first half-hour, the group played nonstop, easing smoothly from one song into the next and occasionally backtracking. If Neil Young and the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia had ever formed a band with Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, it might have sounded like this: Gritty, muscular country-tinged rock, with an experimental, sometimes playful willingness to stretch things out and ride the flow to unexpected peaks, taking tightly choreographed detours into wistful emotion or industrial alienation.

Interestingly, especially for the singer-songwriter genre, neither Adams nor Cardinals guitarist Neal Casal spent any time strumming. The two traded leads, played complementary lines and harmonized. The space that might have been occupied by traditional rhythm guitar work was left for pedal steel guitarist Jon Graboff to explore.

The only flaw in the sound was that Adams' vocals weren't particularly clear. His lyrics came through in snippets, albeit poetic ones: "The scars became the lessons that we gave to our children after the war," from "Magnolia Mountain;" "Daylight comes in exposin'/ Saturday bruises and cold roses" from "Cold Roses."

After 40 minutes of no-nonsense play, Adams began taking time to communicate with the audience, and showed himself to be a good sport, even when it came to the usual level of audience chatter in the Saenger.

"We're just tuning and waiting for people to catch up," he cracked at one point. "A lot of them haven't seen each other since high school. They're talking about what kind of car they got."

Adams said two of his siblings were born in Mobile and his mother had been here just five days before his own birth -- "So this is quite a trip. Nice to see you."

He evidenced a fascination with the Egyptian Revival architecture of the former Scottish Rite temple located near the Saenger.

"Also of note, there is a pyramid in the middle of your town," he commented. "You might want to look into that."

Even when turning down song requests, he showed a sense of humor, saying some listeners reminded him of bingo players who were so busy looking for a specific number that they missed out on the joys of the show.

"I understand that you made a wish," he said, drawing laughter, "but you may have chosen a wrong column."

A single show doesn't make a career. But one like this, even though it lost some of its bounce toward the end of its two-hour-plus run, is a step in the right direction.

Whether or not Adams really is the next big thing, he can certainly justify the speculation.

from The Press-Register newspaper

[littleamen]

I read that earlier today. Nice to hear good reviews. I liked this one.

[Faded Rose]

I seem to be programmed to find the lightweight reviews...but they amuse me.:o This is from Grooveshark...

I first met Ryan Adams in Asheville, North Carolina in May of 2005. Two of my friends and I had just witnessed Ryan and his band The Cardinals play a transcendant show and were eager to meet the guy who’s music had been a staple of our cd players for several years. After we patiently bided our time looking creepy around his tour bus, Adams’ emerged looking like Harry Potter after a 3 week cocaine bender. He sauntered over to the 30 or so people waiting and immediately struck up a conversation with my friend Devin. The conversation went something like this…

Ryan Adams(to Devin): Hey man, I know you. You play for Duke basketball.

Devin(who is 5′11 mind you): Ummm, no I don’t.

Ryan Adams: Sure you do, I watched you on tv last night. You guys played Wake Forest and you won 3-2.

Devin: Oh yeah, how’d I do?

Ryan Adams: You were great, but you had darker hair last night.

Devin: Ok.

That conversation cemented myself as a Ryan Adams fan. I almost say that reluctantly, as acknowledging an affinity for Ryan Adams has become almost like admitting to rampant alcoholism. His surly disposition and penchant for tamper tantrums has transformed him from critical darling to critical pariah. His prolificness is often misinterpreted as indulgent, so much so that a Ryan Adams’ record is reviewed based on the ability of the writer to rephrase the sentence “He Needs an Editor”, rather than the quality of the material. The inability of music critics to objectively listen to a Ryan Adams record is a depressing occurence as nearly every one of them is incredibly good.

With that being said, I was extremely excited about seeing another Ryan Adams show this past week in Mobile, Alabama. After a decade of addiction to hard drugs and alcohol, his newfound sobriety has done nothing to inhibit his inate surliness. From reading message boards, I deduced that going to see a Ryan Adams show on this tour was a lot like watching a Rocky movie. Some of them are great(I and II), some of them are strange and hard to fathom(Rocky IV…when Rocky beats Ivan Drago and simultaneously unites capitalism and communism), and some of them are just bad(V and Balboa). I gathered that the impending show was either going to be amazing or a trainwreck.

It proved to be the former. Adams and The Cardinals exploded out of the gates with an extended version of “Peaceful Valley”. It set the tone for a night filled with raoucous jamming that never seemed indulgent or overlong. The band then launched into several staples of Adams’ catalogue, most notably “Magnolia Mountain” and “Shakedown on 9th Street”.

Adams was in great spirits all night, and with a backing band like the Cardinals behind him I couldn’t blame him. If there is a tighter band out there not named The E Street Band, then I’ve never heard them. Adams and guitarist Neal Casal traded solo’s with unbridled passion and harmonized like The Byrds circa Sweethearts of The Rodeo. It felt like I was watching an American Beauty-era Grateful Dead show. Songs like “The Rescue Blues” and “Easy Plateau” benefited from new, inventive arrangements whereas the quieter, more poigant material like “Nightbirds” and “I Taught Myself How to Grow Old” shone with Adams’ vocal potency.

Somewhere near the middle of the concert a young girl loudly requested Adams’ version of the Oasis hit “Wonderwall”. Adams’ looked agitated, but restrained himself adequately by delivering a random, funny tangent that culminated with him explaining that the girl was “making her wish down the wrong well”. With the potential tantrum averted, Adams and the Cardinals resumed their incredible set, even teasing the girl by singing the first verse of “Wonderwall” before starting “Easy Plateau”.

If it seems like I’m being sycophantic, I’m not. Ryan Adams and The Cardinals played a show that ranks near the top of the list of best concerts I’ve ever seen. If they’re in your area, I suggest checking them out. I’ve listed the tour dates below…