By: Ryan Ruff Smith
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Bob Dylan at Mayo Ball Field - Photo by Daniel Smith
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It may seem strange that Bob Dylan, now 65 years old and 43 years into his recording career, entered the Billboard charts at number one last week, beating out even pop star Jessica Simpson’s new release. It’s been thirty years since Dylan’s last number one record (1976’s Desire), so why is his new album Modern Times a hit? Have his meditations on the modern world made him the voice of a new generation? Or did he call in Rob Thomas and Michelle Branch to do some guest vocals?
No, breathe easily; it’s more or less the same Dylan that we heard on 2001’s Love and Theft, and the sales increase is most likely just the product of an iTunes ad campaign. But as I wound my way through the crowd gathered for Dylan’s concert at Mayo Ball Field in Rochester Thursday night, it made more and more sense to me that the sexagenarian minstrel was currently topping the charts. I was overwhelmed by how ordinary people looked – it looked more like a crowd gathered for a 4th of July parade than for a rock concert. Surely these people were more normal than whoever it is that goes out and buys Jessica Simpson’s new album the day it comes out. Of course, my hasty assessment would later be challenged when the women I had initially pegged as the church bingo club danced around drunkenly in front of me, passing a joint around and stumbling into people. I guess that nothing has ever been quite normal in Dylan’s world.
Bob Dylan’s band was preceded by three opening acts, all of which were pleasant and talented and none of which were challenging. Elana James and the Continental Two (plus one) got the mood started off right with boisterous fiddling and nimble guitar picking on a set of old-timey folk tunes. But though their playing could not have been any tighter, their lack of originality proved them to be nothing more than a museum piece. They were followed by Junior Brown and Jimmie Vaughan, two very talented but unimaginative guitarists who both seemed to sing only to pass the time before another solo. Of course, these acts were all quite competent and were very well received by the crowd. But for me, they reaffirmed my belief that Dylan continues to be relevant only because he uses familiar forms such as blues and rockabilly in an original way and makes them his own – something he achieves admirably on Modern Times.
But however artistically or commercially successful the new album may be, it doesn’t seem to mean a thing to Dylan – he didn’t play a single song from it throughout the entire concert. This didn’t seem to bother the crowd one bit. On the contrary, they seemed thrilled to hear so many of his classic songs. But it was hardly a greatest hits parade either, as he pulled out relatively obscure songs from nearly every decade of his career (the inconsistent 80s were prudently disregarded).
Dylan and his band, who were dressed in matching gray suits and black bowlers, entered to much fanfare (a recording of Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown”) and assumed their places on the stage to thunderous applause. They opened with the exceedingly obscure “Cat’s in the Well,” a cut from his widely disregarded 1990 album Under the Red Sky. Whether they recognized the tune or not, the crowd went nuts – it was hard not to be stunned simply by Dylan’s presence on the stage.
As he has been known to do these days, Dylan played keyboard instead of guitar. The keyboard didn’t seem to add a whole lot musically – it was rarely even discernible above the rest of the band – but it gave Dylan something to stand behind as he sang. And his voice, though quite gruff compared to his earlier years, still rings with strong authority and surprising expressiveness. Often he would just grumble his lyrics in broken-up word clusters, but occasionally he would let loose a melodic warble that showed he could still carry a tune if he so desired.
Maybe it was his new chart-topping status or maybe it was just the fresh air of a minor league ballpark, but Dylan seemed to be in a cheerful mood and the set favored some of his more happy-go-lucky material over the darker, brooding stuff. The band ambled through amiable tunes such as “You Ain’t Going Nowhere,” “Watching the River Flow,” and a surprisingly faithful rendition of “Lay Lady Lay” with ease. As such, the somewhat sinister and mysterious “Ballad of a Thin Man” from Highway 61 Revisited was both an exception and a highlight. The band nailed the foreboding strut of the tune, while Dylan’s playfully grim intonation of the cryptic lyrics made the total effect of the song spine-tinglingly eerie.
Though the classics elicited the biggest crowd reactions, the band actually sounded the most comfortable on the newer material. This isn’t surprising, since it was the same band that actually recorded the studio versions of the swampy rockabilly of “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum” and the swinging firecracker blues rock of “Summer Days,” both from Love and Theft. The latter closed out Dylan’s main set and was the high point of the show. The band managed to sound tight and loose at the same time, swinging like a well-oiled gate while Dylan shot off the loosest, funniest blues lyrics he’s written since The Basement Tapes, maybe even since Blonde on Blonde. Perhaps the lyrics themselves even comment on the song’s return to form feel – “She said you can’t repeat the past / I said what do you mean you can’t? / Of course you can!”
I had an epiphany midway through the set, during a pleasant but unexceptional rendition of “Forever Young.” It has never been one of my favorite Dylan songs; though it is refreshing to hear him do something simple and sweet, it’s always seemed a bit too straightforward for my taste. But as I watched the drunken stoner church ladies in front of me sway woozily to the music, the song took on a strange new relevance – a paradoxical twist born out of context and circumstance. The song is simple and hopeful, but it hopes for the impossible – eternal youth. And it struck me that that’s exactly what makes Dylan’s songs so timeless and complex – they are a tangled collision of what is real and what is only possible. And though his audience may now consist largely of people who are just trying to relive past glory days and teenage revels, this doesn’t seem to bother him a bit. In fact, Dylan has never gotten hung up on what his audience makes of him (check his icy aloofness in DA Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary Don’t Look Back). He seems content to just stand each night behind his keyboard and watch the infinite complexities of the songs he has written winding and unwinding before him, to stroll nonchalantly through the labyrinth he has built. And whether you are able to follow him through those twists and turns or not is largely irrelevant. The ultimate paradox about Dylan is that, in spite of his indifference to his audience, he is a consummate entertainer - a true song and dance man - and you don’t need to understand everything he is saying to enjoy the show. Do you, Mr. Jones?
Setlist:
1.Cat’s in the Well
2.You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
3.Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum
4.Lay Lady Lay
5.Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
6.Ballad of a Thin Man
7.Highway 61 Revisited
8.Forever Young
9.Watching The River Flow
10.Simple Twist of Fate
11.Things Have Changed
12.Summer Days
Encore:
13.Like A Rolling Stone
14.All Along the Watchtower
Band:
Bob Dylan - Keyboard, Vocals, Harmonica
Tony Garnier - Bass
George Recile - Drums
Stu Kimball - Rhythm Guitar
Denny Freeman - Lead Guitar
Donnie Herron - Electric Mandolin, Pedal Steel, Lap Steel
Location Info:
Mayo Ball Field
Artist Info: Bob Dylan
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