In my previous life as a chronicler of shows, I wrote detailed concert recaps that were more play-by-play than exegesis. But the setlist and banter Friday night at Kult in Helsinki weren’t nearly as important as the immersive experience of…
I saw Bob Dylan in concert for only the second time on Thursday, October 16, 2025, in Helsinki, on show #1 (we were first, baby!) of the Fall 2025 Rough and Rowdy Ways tour.
It’s ironic that, despite having lived half my life in Minnesota, I never saw Dylan in the US. Both my Dylan concert experiences have been in Finland.
By way of a smooth transition, Dylan’s last performance before heading to Finland to start his European tour was a 23-minute, five-song set at Farm Aid in Minnesota on September 20th.
Regular readers of my Substack may have noticed I’ve stolen more lines from Nada Surf to illustrate ideas than lines from any other band in recent years, most recently, my essay called “All Flavors All the Time,” a line from “So Much…
Despite being a lifelong music geek, I wasn’t familiar with the Dutch band NITS until this past year. It’s not like the band has been hiding under a rock for the fifty years of their existence, and I’m not ignorant…
To do a dangerous thing with style Is what I call art. – Charles Bukowski When my concert companion asked what I thought about Rickie Lee Jones’s performance in Helsinki Wednesday night as we walked from the venue, it made…
During the encore of his 32-song, three-hour show in Helsinki Friday night, Bruce Springsteen asked the audience of 42 thousand, “Do you think you can outlast the E Street band?” I, for one, couldn’t, even if Springsteen is 74 and…
I vividly recall Nick Cave’s tour stop in Helsinki on the “Conversations with Nick Cave” tour in 2019. Not just because I was one of the lucky few selected to sit on stage with the performer during the first of his two-night…
Ready to get out, be entertained and enjoy theater again? Of course, you are! Minneapolis Musical Theatre is back with its latest choice for a “rare musical,” a niche for which the company is well known. Hands on a Hardbody,…
We can’t review plays when there are no plays to be reviewed. Therefore, until Gov. Walz decides to “re-open” live theaters, we will, unfortunately, be on hiatus. There is, however, movement in the theater world: the estimable Sarah Rasmussen, artistic…
This terrific show puts me in mind of the Greg Brown lyric: “I get the good blues / When I think about you.” Keb’ Mo’ and Anderson Edwards have the good blues. These two have put together the tastiest, bluesiest…
Interstate (Mixed Blood Theatre, through March 29) contains a standout performance: Sushma Saha as the young woman chafing in a small (and very conservative) American town, struggling to become Henry, to “man up,” to become who she really is. Saha…
In The White Card, at Penumbra Theatre things don’t go awry in the way you might expect. Playwright Claudia Rankin dives head first into the American race relations. The play starts with Charles and his wife, Virginia (both white) who…
