Musical Marathon, part 2--Bob Dylan

Fri, July 15

My July music marathon continued with Bob Dylan’s concert at the Orange County Fair.  Here’s a brief timeline of my relationship with Dylan: 

• 1960’s:  I loved all his earliest work up through about Nashville Skyline while I was in college.  He was the king of attitude, the poet of my generation.
• 1970’s-2000‘s:  Dylan was in the background of my musical life.  I listened to opera, then great American songbook.  I didn’t know his music at all.
• 2008:  I saw jazz singer Paula West in San Francisco, and she included Like a Rolling Stone in her set.  I realized what a great song it was and decided it was time to revisit this idol of my youth. 

So....I listened to the albums I had known in college--the early “protest” songs and youthful angst anthems--and found them still exciting and compelling.   Then I began to explore all the music I had missed, from Blood on the Tracks onward.  I read books and reviews and generally tried to make up for lost time.  I shared the general dismay with the Dylan of the 1980’s, but in general I was overwhelmed by the great music I had ignored for decades. 

I am especially crazy about his music since Oh Mercy in 1989  (Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, Modern Times, Together Through Life).  To my peers who haven’t followed him recently, I highly recommend these five CDs.  I think they are the equal of his early triumphs.  Dylan has aged and his music evolved just as we all have.  Rather than endlessly recycling early hits Dylan has written original, profound, and tuneful songs about getting old, being old, looking back on your life and facing your death.  These recent five CDs provide the view back at a life lived just as the early songs shone light on an uncertain and frightening future.

With all of this under my belt, I went to see Dylan last year in Las Vegas.  I invited a good friend and former student who lives there and who had no particular attachment to Dylan.  Despite all the build up, I couldn’t help being a little disappointed in the concert.  I couldn’t understand most of the words and I couldn’t see Dylan very well.  Even the tunes were hard to identify since he never tries to reproduce the original versions.   I still loved all the music, and I heard many accounts of Dylan concerts that were similarly ambivalent.  (My friend was totally frustrated at the incomprehensible lyrics and gave up on Dylan, at least in live concert.)

When I heard that Dylan would open the Orange County Fair, I decided that I wanted to see him as often as I could since I had missed so many years--and at 70 he might not have that many concerts left.  So I headed down to my old stomping ground of coastal Orange County to the OC Fair.  I resisted the deep fried twinkies and chocolate covered bacon and headed to the amphitheater.  The first thing I noticed was how many old geezers were there....Then I realized they were my peers!  Yes a lot of folks in their sixties actually made it to another big outdoor rock concert!  Good for us!

There was no opening act.  Bob just came out with his current band and started playing.  He played 17 songs: 
Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
Things Have Changed
Tangled Up In Blue
Beyond Here Lies Nothin' (Bob on guitar)
Sugar Baby
High Water (For Charley Patton)
Tryin' To Get To Heaven
Summer Days
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
Highway 61 Revisited
Forgetful Heart
Thunder On The Mountain
Ballad Of A Thin Man      
(encores)
Like A Rolling Stone
All Along The Watchtower
Blowin' In The Wind. 

You’ll notice that they range from old songs (Blowin in the Wind, Like a Rolling Stone, Ballad of a Thin Man, etc.) to new songs (Beyond Here Lies Nothin, Thunder on the Mountain) and some in between (Tangled up in Blue, Watchtower).  I can’t think of anyone who could put together such a powerful concert with songs spanning half a century. 

(By the way, you can find playlists and reviews from all of Dylan's concerts back to 1995 at boblinks.com.  This website makes clear that Bob Dylan still has an incredibly loyal following around the world.  Check it out.  You can also see the set list with links to the lyrics of all his songs at bobdylan.com.)

Dylan doesn’t talk between songs, except for introducing the band members before the encores.  They just play and he sings.  This time I was prepared.  I had binoculars and I spent most of the time looking through them.  Dylan definitely has moves!  They are sort of old man moves, but he moves to the music in his own way.  And he smiled every so often as he sang. 

Perhaps because of this visual connection I could identify most of the songs.  Although they sounded different from the CD, they were all undeniably great songs.  I got more and more into the music with each song.  As always, Tangled Up in Blue stirred me with its glimpse into life’s complexity, and A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall is still ominous and menacing. 

I was especially taken by Ballad of a Thin Man (Because something is happening here--But you don’t know what it is--Do you, Mister Jones?) which seems so timely (Mr. Boehner?  Mr. Rove?  Mr. Romney?).  With that song I realized that Bob Dylan still speaks to us from outside the halls of power, outside the conventional wisdom, outside the comfortable illusions that flood our lives and drown out our true voices. 

Bob Dylan still follows his own path and just sings it like it is.  He’s been rich and famous for over 50 years, but he’s not part of any establishment.  He continues to represent the best of our generation by urging us to eschew conformity and conceit and to be true to ourselves.  And he still travels around the country singing for all of us night after night.  Bravo Bob!

So I drove home from Costa Mesa inspired and exhilarated, Dylan blasting on the stereo.  What could top this?

Tomorrow night--a new musical at the Pasadena Playhouse called Twist (from Charles Dickens, not Chubby Checkers).