In the knowledge that The Word is hospitably disposed towards the excellent new web endeavour The Arts Desk, and also knowing that there are sure to be a few Lau fans lurking here, I hope it’s not bad form to post a link to my review of last night’s Lau show in Edinburgh.

http://tiny.cc/M5vOn

In brief, it was proper.

OK, so Graham Nash just *is* Eric Idle (I will brook no argument on this one).

Which musicians do we need to draft in to make up the rest of Monty Python? Mick Fleetwood as Cleese...?

I’m currently reading (and enjoying) the late Alan Coren’s collected words of wisdom, which is edited by Giles and Victoria Coren, two of history’s less persuasive arguments for nepotism.

So simply, the question is this: which stars with famous parents are sufficiently gifted in their own right that we can forgive them a large helping hand from mum or dad?

And, conversely, who gives nepotism its bad name?

A brief appeal to the Word Massive (Caledonian Branch).

I’ve got to know former Bhundu Boy Rise Kagona a little in the last few years. A great guitarist and a very fine chap, he’s currently living in Edinburgh and has lately been gigging with old NME stalwart ‘Champion’ Doug Veitch. The odd couple are playing a fundraiser for "Friends of Play Soccer Malawi" (http://www.friendsofpsm.org.uk/2.html) this Saturday - May 30 - at the Pleasance Cabaret Bar, 60 The Pleasance, in Edinburgh.

I’ve seen them play a few times and they’re always good value, and the occasion is sure to be fun. As a nod to the cause, the concert will include an auction of various football items: Celtic, Rangers, Hearts and Hibs shirts signed by the team, signed footballs from the same clubs, a Manchester United shirt signed by first team squad and a Tevez shirt, lovingly signed by the gentle hand of the Argentinian roustabout himself. Nothing yet from Messi and Co, alas, but there is the promise of many other items to come.

Doug is running the Edinburgh Marathon the following day, May 31, also in aid of "Friends of Play Soccer Malawi". I know any support would be hugely appreciated.

That’s all. Back to your desks.

Maybe we got him on a good night. Maybe my expectations were so low that anything short of a live demonstration of how to contract swine flu would have seemed like a treat. I don’t know. I’d never seen Dylan before so I had couldn’t compare it with Bournemouth in ’02 and Earls Court in ’78 like all the proper Bobcats, all I know is that I spent two hours watching him perform at the Edinburgh Playhouse last night and not once did I think – Jesus, what *am* I doing here?

He looked truly extraordinary. Pipe cleaner legs, clad in black strides with a yellow trim. An odd mix of waistcoat and straightjacket up top, with some kind of diamante augmentation around the neck, the whole combo topped off with a wide brimmed black hat. When he was truly feeling the music – which was often; I saw nothing cynical or weary in what he was doing, and he played a lot of guitar, which I believe is A Good Sign - his left leg performed the strange, twisting, stationary dance of a man extinguishing a particularly stubborn cigarette. Afforded an extra insight courtesy of the Playhouse’s nifty opera glasses, I couldn’t take my eyes off his feet for minutes at a time.

I thought he played something close to a blinder. He popped on and lit straight into 'Leopardskin Pillbox Hat', which went off like a firecracker. His voice was clear as a bell and was obviously familiar with the parameters of the original tune. Over half the set was similarly blues-based, which did him a lot of favours – when you know instinctively where the tune is going, you can follow him there quite comfortably. It probably also helped that the Playhouse – as opposed to the O2 or even somewhere like the SECC – is an old-fashioned, shabby-genteel theatre, everything buffed up deep hooker-red. It holds only about 3000 people and the sound was superb. I can’t imagine the Dylan experience – not a word was uttered throughout, and the band hovered round their master in a semi-circle, like nervous footballers awaiting a half-time bollocking – looks or sounds any better the further away you stand.

A few simple truths emerged as the evening wore on. Dylan is a quite *heroically* bad electric guitar player. I have never seen anyone – certainly not anyone charging on the door – play quite so badly yet with such obvious relish. Half way through 'I Don’t Believe You' I realised his mouth and his hands were trying to renew their acquaintance with two entirely different pieces of music. The worse it got, the more he insisted on playing the same deranged little riff, and the more the crowd loved it. It was like watching some strange dysfunctional relationship unfold. And what about that organ sound? Usually only deployed during the octagenarian tea-dance at the Winter Gardens, it became quite mesmerising after a while. He forgot the ‘You never turned around…’ verse on 'Like A Rolling Stone' and stabbed away at his keyboard for a couple of minutes, twitching like a trauma victim. The crowd loved that, too. From our seat at the front of the circle, virtually hanging over the stage, it was all great theatre.

But the core of the show was sound and solid. Near the end, I actually felt I was being cheated of some vital part of the Dylan live experience: where are all these incomprehensible versions of classic songs? Where was the sledgehammer revisionism? What was all this about people not recognising a tune until some stray syllable from the last verse left a trail of breadcrumbs leading to a spark of recognition. *Really?*

What I saw was a 67-year-old man singing as best he can with the voice we all know he possesses, playing some songs – some great, some merely OK, a few genuinely superb ('Po’ Boy', 'High Water', 'Ain’t Talkin’,' a beautiful 'Just Like A Woman') - with a tight little bar band. The only song I initially struggled to place was 'Sugar Baby', but I was on its case within 90 seconds. 'Tangled Up in Blue' was certainly wearing an odd set of clothes, but there was nothing arbitrary about it; there were plenty of reasons not to like it, I’ll grant you, but you could see what he was trying to do: Dylan and the guitar player had some spooky little riff on which they were hanging the rest of the song. There seemed to me nothing careless or perfunctory about any of it.

He finished with a not-half-bad version of 'Blowin’ In the Wind', wandering centre-stage at the end, puffing tunelessly into his harmonica, limbs jiggling slightly in classic Zimmerman style, like someone above was gently jerking the strings on this stupendously *odd* little marionette below. He sloped off doing some kind of weird hipster comedy walk. I like to think he looked happy; everyone else in the place certainly did.

We didn’t pay for our tickets, but I’ve already set 50 quid aside for the next time he’s in town.

I'm on a bit of a John Le Carre jag at the moment. I'd forgotten what a searingly funny and seriously fine writer he is. And astute. This prescient little gem jumped out of 'The Tailor of Panama' - apply it to whatever you wish, be it Swine Flu, Jade Goody or the latest Premiership football rumour:

"Nothing is more predictable than the media's parroting of its own fictions and the terror of each competitor that it will be scooped by the others, whether or not the story is true because quite frankly dears, in the news games these days, we don't have the staff, time, interest, energy, literacy or minimal sense of responsibility to check our facts by any means except calling up whatever has been written by other hacks on the same subject and repeating it as gospel."

This was written in the mid-90s, before the internet ruled the world. I bet he's *really* mad now.

... or Very Bad Call?

This just in from PASTE magazine's website:

Van Morrison is venturing into the slipstream to play his landmark 1968 album Astral Weeks in its entirety for two back-to-back concerts Nov. 7 and 8 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. For the record to be truly born again, Morrison is calling on a few musicians who performed on the original sessions 40 years ago.

"I never got to take these songs on tour," Morrison explains, leaving no doubt why he's relishing the chance to give these tunes, which he calls,"as timeless and fresh right now as the day they were written," a proper staging.

Tickets for this watershed event went on sale Oct. 5 via Ticketmaster, but should you find yourself caught on Cypress Avenue, never fear: the shows will be recorded for a live release due on vinyl this December and CD by next January on Morrison's Listen to the Lions Records.

It’s Sunday night, so it must be Tom Waits in Edinburgh. A scrum at the Playhouse doors as passports are checked, a hum of excitement, a few London faces quietly resenting being made to travel all this way to see the man who last played here 21 years ago. All good.

He comes on late in a cloud of dust and leaves in a shower of glitter. The two and a half hours in between are truly captivating. Not once did the eye fly to the wrist, which in my experience is extraordinary. It’s so rare to see someone take complete stewardship of a stage. He twirls around the microphone stand like some cartoon cliché of an Indian rain dance, he stretches his fingers out to the crowd like some corny magician, he plays ringmaster and preacher, he goofs around with lightbulbs and hats. All the time, every second, he knows precisely what he is doing.

A Waits show is so far removed from the standard rites of rock performance that there is little to compare it with. Really, it’s theatre, and never ever less than utterly gripping. Waits is the mesmeric lead but his band of supporting players are absolutely sensational: they can do anything, from the tiniest feather stroke to the filthiest racket.

What did he play? Stompers, bawlers, lullabies, testimonials and skits. Thoughts about ‘fishcakes’ and ‘pigs in satin’ drift into the air. Jesus Gonna Be Here made the earth shake. I’ll Shoot The Moon was a five minute masterclass in theatre, mime, stand up and Vegas lounge act. Half way through he sat down at the piano and dusted off Invitation To The Blues and Innocent When You Dream, playing it straight and sentimental. He might not have played all your favourites but not for one second would you have noticed. Afterwards, the consensus was that it was a much more varied set than the he was playing on his last UK visit in 2004, with a balanced scattering of old and new. And even then, oldies like Raindogs were battered into fresh new shapes.

So what are you left with afterwards? Firstly, that stagecraft isn’t a matter of splashing the cash on the latest technology: all it takes is a few bags of glitter, some big boots and a floorful of talc, a boxing bell, a few megaphones and the odd bare lightbulb, all glued together by an overactive, feverishly smart imagination. If the whole thing cost more than $100 I’d be surprised.

Secondly, that people who come to live shows expecting to hear a list of their favourite songs will always be disappointed, and deservedly so.

Above all, that Waits works very hard to make it look like he’s just invited us to drop in on him, that he does this all the time and tonight we just happen to be here. But look at the back of his grey suit as he scuttles off stage, fingers twinkling behind him. It’s black with sweat, soaked through the layers. No wonder he doesn’t do this very often.

Bowie's Black Country Rock popped up on my iTunes this morning. And very welcome it was too. I'd forgotten that right in the middle he goes into a very funny and nigh-on perfect Marc Bolan impersonation. Bowie also does a very good Dylan, although I'm not sure whether there's any recorded evidence of it.

The question is, who else has sneaked an impersonation into one of their songs? It has to be a deliberate nod, not just someone desperately apeing someone else. Michael Stipe doing Presley on Man On The Moon springs immediately to mind - who else?