This is what I wrote about Ryan Adam’s Carnegie Hall gig December 2011: ” I can’t put my finger on the problem, but it felt slight. It felt like he didn’t bring his A game, it felt like the more intimate L.A. gigs were better. Perhaps Ryan’s ease worked against him; his joking on his days in nyc were the least funny moments. There was no sense of a homecoming. This was a different Ryan, his comfort in his own skin was palpable and he managed to be serious and be funny. I shouldn’t hold it against him yet I do. The intensity was there but it felt dispersed.”
I wasn’t crazy about Ashes And Fire either, liked it a lot but not loved it, I prefer Ryan Adams, his new album out today but not enough to give it a full post review. yes, at its best it is great but most of the time it is a little Ryan does classic rock -sorta, doesn’t he any way. And anyway, he was better in New York with the Cardinals, it suited him more.
But I have every intention of going to see him at the Hammerstein Ballroom on Saturday November 22nd, because he was so good at Newport, because he has his new band behind him and because, well, because he owes me one. A hundred bucks a pop by the way.
