SETLIST
COMMENTS/FURTHER
INFORMATION
Submitted
by Reg
Brick.
Bruce was in fine form when he performed outside at Centennial Square in Victoria on Wednesday, July 14, 2004. He told us some rules of travelling. You get the furthest room in the hotel if you have the most luggage. You depart from the furthest departure bay (in an airport) if you have the most luggage and the least time to get there. And the one that affected him the most is you always get the room by the construction zone. That was his situation in Victoria and he said he was feeling sleep deprived - but went on to a great performance – he was in top form. You just never know how you are going to do when you are down on your sleep. Sometimes we overcompensate and achieve.
My Beat is about the present tense, as you have to be in the moment when you are learning the bike routes in "my new town" - Montreal. He said there are lot of bike paths and cyclists but they don't get much respect from either the cars or the pedestrians. Put It In Your Heart is about reacting to the emotion in the air after 911. Gerry Falwell said 911 happened because of gays, lesbians & abortion. Bruce had a very angry reaction to this but shifted his tone after realizing that his anger and disgust of Mr. Falwell was just adding to the negativity. Before This Is Baghdad, he talked about going to Baghdad for a week. He wanted insight as to conditions there under which people are living. In addition, he attended a lot of meetings - everyone who spoke up said the war was all about oil. There was 1 big car bomb on a Friday morning which left 37 people dead.
Later during the show, a woman asked him if he would come back to her place and he said he would if it was quieter.
After the concert, the film "The Man We Call Juan Carlos" was screened. It's about 20 years in the life of Wenceslao Arima, a Mayan human rights activist in Guatamala. Bruce wrote and performed the soundtrack for this film. Its gut wrenching and suggests the US has not learned much in terms of intervening militarily and killing so many civilians whenever they get involved with another countries politics – Iraq is the obvious current example.