The good news is that Bob Dylan is still alive and kicking! The bad news is, um, I'm not sure how much longer he actually will be. There were quite a few true oddities at this concert, to be frank. The first one was that his name was not anywhere on the marquee, and instead it just read "Rough and Rowdy Ways", as if that was the name of the band we were seeing (versus the name of the tour). We debated the reasoning behind this and could only come up with safety as an explanation, considering we're living in an age where random fans go up on stage with daggers and try to attack performers. I would think Dylan is fairly protective in general so this seemed like the logical reasoning but who knows if it's actually true.
The next weird thing, that I actually greatly applaud, mind you, is that no cell phones were allowed. In fact, if you brought one, it was locked in a secure case and could only be unlocked after the show. It was like the olden days all over again with no one sticking up a phone in your view during the show (aaahh). This was a rare positive for the night.
I was under the impression that Dylan was primarily a guitarist. Except for the instrumental bluesy opening number, though, he never played guitar again through the whole set. Instead, he basically stood behind an upright piano the whole show so that the only thing visible on him was his head and mop of hair or hat, depending upon the song, and then he came out 80% of the time from behind the piano once the song was done so that the crowd could see his entire body. Once everyone clapped a bit, he would do a strange prance back behind the piano once again. Personally, I've never seen anyone do this and the whole thing seemed a bit unusual.
We then debated why they'd have the piano positioned so that it blocked his entire body during the performance. It was almost like it was helping him stand upright because when he didn't have the piano there he looked incredibly frail, like he could maybe fall at any moment. He did actually sing one song just holding the microphone but he was incredibly fidgety and the song was abnormally short, like maybe only 3 minutes. Again, kind of odd. We therefore wondered if he wasn't actually able to stand or hold a guitar on him at this point, and maybe that's why he didn't really play one. Who knows.
His voice is, well, it's what it is. He almost sounds a bit like Tom Waits at this point and trying to understand any words coming out of his mouth was nearly impossible. The sound system was also the lowest volume I think I've ever heard at a concert of this type, so much that it was almost completely pointless to even have my ear plugs in. The little bit of guitar playing that he did do during the opening number was done nearly in complete darkness, and even though I thought that the lights would go on once the singing began, they really didn't. I've never seen a darker stage in my life, almost to the point where you could barely make out Dylan's face much. Again, very strange.
Lastly, his playing, whether it was that intro electric guitar or his piano playing, was quite underwhelming. I mean, he played piano close to around my ability which is saying very, very little. The sound guys seemed to constantly try to hide his playing by lowering the volume of his instrument, trying to mask it by the other sounds going on. Even more disturbing, Dylan's entire backing band watched him constantly with just a strange look in their eyes, like they were expecting him to keel over at any moment, and that they had a contingency plan in the wings just in case that did happen. The whole thing was just very odd.
Apart from physically seeing Dylan live on stage, there really wasn't too much to cheer for. He never once addressed the audience and he didn't say a peep when the band left stage. In fact, there was no encore, and it was almost like he was debating whether we were worth another song, of which we apparently weren't. I'd say, unless you're a mega fan or like me and have never seen him live, there's not much reason to go now. The guy is 81 years old, though, so I guess we need to give him a break and understand his limitations.
Still, it's hard to take it all in when you're looking at a living legend on stage, so I guess that's worth something. The sad part is that I don't think Dylan would stand a chance today if he was young and just starting out, and that says way more about us and society than it does anything else. Cheers to you, Bob!
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