im surprised no one has posted about it yet.

well might i say i say im still stunned from almost a week. ive never seen Arlo before (except on the woodstock footages). Everything that people have said i his favour is true but still comes nowhere near describing his brilliance.

Im still quite young (20), and ive only just discovered folk music and the other kinds of music with meaningful lyrics and skilled musicians, spending most of my teens listening to rock and other mostly uninspired genres. So arlo was one of my first live folk concerts and without sounding kinda silly hes the best ive ever seen. ive been playing guitar for about 10 years classical guitar for the first 3 before i was tainted with popular music. After seeing arlo from only a few feet away and watching him play ive now been inspired to go and relearn all the technique of fingerpicking, and expanding my repetoire of songs i can play and sing (if anyone has any artiists and titles i should learn please email them to me). getting a few arlo songs under my belt.

As for the set list, absolutely fantastic. many memorable songs ive never heard and even some i had. he played a song that i guess is named hello my old friend, arlo said he only wrote it a few weeks ago. it was a song about old songs that arlo recalled after seeing a print of he and janis joplin in a cafe, in a shop window. man what a great song almost brought a tear to my eye, beautiful structure and lyrics that cut straight o the point. would love to learn it if someone has a tab for it. Another thing that blew me away was when he put his guitar down got up and started to play the piano, bob dylan has just recently found a place in my heart, and arlo just gets on the piano and starts playing "when the ship comes in" like some kinda concert pianist or something, far out. he played a few of his dads songs as well, most of which i knew, and it was great to hear them. janis joplin's, me and bobby mcgee was another memorable track.

the stories were, well, incredible to say the least. some so funny i just couldnt stop laughing others sad enough to make a grown man cry. his stories, though hilarious always had some kinda meaning to them. theres not to many ppl left in the world that can tell a story seemingly unrelated to anything then right at them end say something that just ties it all up, by that i mean just says "hey the story i just made up you know you can apply that to pretty much anything you want", whether it be a political or moral situation or anything really. so u listen and you think man he just totally summed it all up right there. what a great talent to have. and to top it all off he just keeps on goin, when everyone is still just stunned by how true to the fact his last statement was.

sound and light was ok, i was positioned on the right of stage and the speakers there had a crackle somewhere in the mid range which could have edged a few of the audiophiles in the audience, lights were good too, just gave a little bit more atmosphere to the words of the songs.

his supporter. miss martin, was also a fantastic artist. played all originals i think and had such a great voice.. her lyrics were spot on what i like in australian folk, telling it how it is in the country towns like where im from. i would recommend anyone to seek out her music.

all in all a great concert that could only be topped if he stayed and played for another couple of hours. it was nice to meet him at the end as well and get an autograph. cant wait til he comes back to oz again, im already anxious to see him again. if i had the money id travel to his next few performances. guess il have to wait.

Seat 36C,

Your description of the experience took me right there; thank you! A suggestion to help alleviate the long time between hearing Arlo talk: If you go to the Guthrie Center (in the gray list on the left), you can join the Guthrie Center. The Guthrie Center building is the church where the Alice's Restaurant story really happened as well as where it was filmed, and now is the heart and spiritual home of this community. If you join the GC, besides contributing to the great programs and restoration/maintenance of the building, you're on the mailing list for the Rolling Blunder Review. Published whenever it's time for one, these bring Arlo's thoughts and musings right to your own mailbox, in print! (Unless you are Cheryl, whose mailbox seems to have a strong spell on it that doesn't allow the RBR to enter until months after everyone else's copies arrive.) Just a thought.

Again, thanks for the great description, and welcome!

Hello all,

I have just registered with Arlo.net and this is my first post.

I saw Arlo in Sydney, Australia on 12 June 2004 with my sons, aged 12 and 16 (both Arlo fans as well). Then on the Monday I took the 12-year-old to see the latest Harry Potter movie, and on the way home he said "Dad, I wish there really was magic in the world". I replied "There is; we saw some on Saturday night!" He replied: "Dad, that was just an old hippie singing!"

True, but this was also magic. Arlo's wit and humor, his beautiful music and his powerful message of peace and love, as relevant today as way back when, had tears of laughter sometimes and tears of emotion at other times (for example, "Portland Town") running down our faces. I have never walked away from a concert with my cheeks hurting from laughing before! Nor have I ever walked away from a concert feeling so good.

Arlo, I have been to many great concerts in the last 30 years, and I hesitate to say that this was the best I have seen. This is now Thursday and I am still buzzing from it, so that would be too easy to say. What I can say for certain is that this concert will be one of the few that live in my memory forever. If my old brain is still working in 30 years time, I will remember this concert. There are few concerts I can say that about.

Please come back to Australia. Please come back to Australia frequently! My wife missed you on Saturday - please come back for her, and for all the rest of us pick-carrying Arlo fans!

went over 100 miles to see arlo again,after seeing him at kedron wavell , which was the best concert i have seen, even better than all the dylan concerts i've i've seen .but tonite i had a taste of the ugly hand of officer oddie in the form of redneck suck screw i t y ,they were having jokes with each other about how would you like to live in the same street as this lot ,i think i would anytime. my dad died from war causes when i was 7, my sister 4 &brother 3.poor mum had to scrub floors for a number of years while fighting a fasisit govt for a penison, i dont have much time for war at any cost, so dylan meant something to me <blowing in the wind>&in some way arlo too , when i was young we had a band &play arlo &bobs songs to the kids at teachers colledge ,&in the last 8 years i performed them to kids at art uni &other venues, i didnt know arlo had kept making records , if i had then all of them would be there with all of ry cooder, john hyatt, woody, dylan& many others,the joy &love for me was playing my guitar,i've just been through 6 months of hell my war widow mum has bone cancer, she was not travelling well, at last she is doing paintingto pass the time &seems to be more at peace.well i hardly ever go out ,keeping an eye on her.Seeing arlo really helped me through, even though i'm with the god direct plan & am positive , its a hard road to travel continues on below

cont.i was seriously injured ,4 prolapses into third of the way into the spinal cord, 18 years of it,you need music, somehow ive managed todo 7 years of uni ,fine art ,film&tv,&am a small film maker,what little i saw of arlo , abe &gordon was brill sound &visual, but the goon hoon squad decended on me, head bunt me then,not sure wheather i was thrown to the floor but thats where i ended up&now the back is hurting wicked, not joking , hope i'm walking in the morning, do we really need the old fucker goon squad, ked/wavell have young cool dudes .i never got to see arlo one last time,just wanted to ask if i could get an item to go to fund raiser to help kids who lost parents in war<legecy>it helped me when i was a child, before the show i gave gordon a copy of a dvd i made from this tour, my friend bob dylan helped me with a fund raiser with the childrens hospital a few years back.& last year he send me the handle from his walking stick. i do dylan just like bob, the most happy for me is playing hyway in the wind, or bobs songs& i mean 30 years of them& the ones he does of others& i know his secret email . BLISS JOY PEACE &LOVE FOR ALL, TOM. TILL NEXT TIME.

Sorry to hear about Tiger's troubles. I was hoping that someone might ask me why I referred to Arlo's fans as pick-carrying, but no-one did, so I am going to tell you the significance of the pick anyway.

At the Sydney show Arlo's support act was the brilliant young singer-songwriter Jodi Martin who set the scene for Arlo's anti-war messages with her powerful first track "your way". As it turns out, Jodi can tell a story almost as well as Arlo, and she told us of one evening in Arlo's tour of 1998 when she was also Arlo's support act.

She had one of those nights in Sydney in 1998 when many things go wrong. When she came out to play she had to re-arrange the stage somewhat, then she started singing and realised her (acoustic) guitar was not plugged in, then she did a track with a mandolin which was taken off the stage immediately after the track with her pick in the strings. Now she needed the pick for the next track. First she tried to call the stage manager back with her mandolin, but he did not hear her. In desperation she asked the audience if anyone had a pick. Half the audience offered her one (and to make a long story even longer, the guy who gave her a pick became her partner!)

Last Saturday, before she started this story, Jodi asked if anyone had a pick with them. More than half the audience put up their hands, including me and one of my sons. Jodi said something like: "only Arlo's audience brings picks with them to a concert!"

Now if you think about the 40% or so without picks, they would be made up of people who forgot their picks, fingerpickers, keyboard players and the odd drummer. We can safely say that the great majority of the audience were musicians, amateur or professional.

What does it say about the quality of a musicians work when most of his/her audience are musicians themselves? Keen enough musicians to be pick-carrying? High praise indeed, I think.

hi bill , think i might pick up my old guitar,fender acoustic, do some dylan , even hyway in the wind, i do it diferently than arlo ,a gas still ,but you know god gave me this special gift with my voice, can do almost anybody , &also have been conservitorium of music trained, ive been inplays where you have toproject your voice in halls without amps, love doing dylans voice the most , at uni one time i did marleys redemption song in the centre of uni, an islander dude came to see who it was &was schocked to finda white boy doing that song, but the voice was just like bob marleys, i was in the students union then , &the kids loved me doing those songs, i felt the need to pass on to them , the spirit of woody dylan arlo & who ever there was. dont get many gigs anymore, had on last year at the bowling club , <like a bowling stone> lol ,5 electric guitars, bass inclusive, hamond organ , drums, me in poka dot shirt black ray bands, hair toulosed up, doing bobs voice&harp,300 people all ages loved it,me i just love performing,wasnt expecting the applause, back hurting bye, tom