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March 23, 2005
Bob Dylan/Merle Haggard, March 12
HUSTICIOUS
Whoa, we're seriously late on this one, but what's the old saying? "Better never than late" or some shit? I think it took us a while to process ol' Bob Dylan. It's hard to really describe this show in terms of "good" or "bad," because it was something almost completely alien to me. Gone was the massive list of catchy, folky mega-hits from the '60s and '70s that I know and love. That may go without saying since Dylan has obviously been recording relentlessly for decades after that period and would probably rather shoot himself in the face than play "Blowin' in the Wind" one more time. But still, I thought we'd get at least a couple surly renditions of slightly more obscure faves like "I Believe in You," or "One of Us Must Know," perhaps sung with the sarcastic, almost mocking note Dylan is known for tinging his songs with in front of an audience.
We did not get that. What we got was a Bob Dylan possessed--a 64-year-old dynamo who jumped around the stage like his pants were on fire, spreading his legs like a five-foot Mick Jagger and pounding on a keyboard with childlike gusto. It was contrary to everything I'd heard his live show would be, and so far removed from anything I've ever heard him play--during any era--it could have been a completely different artist. In fact, my seats in the bleachers of the massive, dingy Chiles Center at University of Portland were so terrible (and uncomfortable) I'm not convinced it WASN'T someone else; perhaps Jakob Dylan with some makeup on to look older. The man famous for his dismissive live performances was living out his fantasy--playing music that even his most diehard fans would have trouble connecting with--and it seemed to energize him.
The departure began with Dylan's voice, which sounded like a smoker's cough getting filtered through a blender. And this has nothing to do with the man's signature nasal drone, which at least has a semblance of melodic potential. It wasn't even a distorted version of THAT, but rather a low, guttural growl that sounded like a monster from hell. For not one single moment did he sing like his old self, or even his new self, but steadfastly snarled, sneered, and even chortled for the entire hour and a half set. Never once did he play guitar, or leave his strangely dinky-looking keyboard, exept to make aimless jaunts around the stage, as if the thing inside him needed to stretch its legs. He did introduce the other band members at one point, which included two gnarly drummers and a smokin' hot fiddler lady, among several others. I don't know their names because I couldn't decipher Dylan's ragged rasp, which is unfortunate because they deserve some props. Even though their ultra-blues-heavy style was not what I'd come to hear, they played it with amazing skill and force, frequently upstaging Dylan, who was almost painful to listen to at times. Together with Dylan, they twisted weird numbers from his '80s and '90s canon, and a few standards like "Highway 61" and "All Along the Watchtower," into minor-keyed, tuneless blues bombs that were basically different songs, but with the the same lyrics. After the show, Ice Gorilla said to me "I wish Dylan had played at least one hit." "He did," I replied. "He played 'It Ain't Me Babe.'" "He played 'It Ain't Me Babe'?" said IG, an enormous Dylan fan for years.
I hope this all doesn't sound like complaining. It definitely was unexpected, but in its unexpectedness it WAS expected, for that's exactly what we've come to expect from Bob Dylan. It was very weird, but it was done with such mastery that I never for a moment questioned what I'd paid for: the full "Bob Dylan Experience"--passionate, brilliant, and utterly uncompromising.
DRINKS DRUNK: One overpriced bottle of Pepsi
ICE GORILLA
I heard the hearsay about Bob Dylan and his recent live shows. I listened to my ignorant friends rant about his wrecked voice and audience inaccessibility. I read the reviews that stated that Dylan just wasn’t the musician he once was. Oh I listened, and I turned my head and scoffed.
How wrong I was.
Sail the flag at half mast, fire your rifles, play the funereal march just as loud as you can, because the Bob Dylan of our nostalgic pasts is dead.
I am a Bob Dylan fan. The kind that listens to Blonde on Blonde and Blood On The Tracks and nods his head. The sort that is never unhappy when a little classic Dylan is played on the radio. I do not search out his obscure B-sides. I do not own every live show he has ever recorded. Yet, I was excited to shell out sixty dollars to see Dylan live two weeks ago at the golden aberration that is the Chiles Center.
Five minutes in to Dylan’s set, all that remained of my excitement was a sticky puddle dripping on to the heads of the people crammed against my feet.
Before the concert began my girlfriend and I made a bet about how old Dylan really is; I said he was 75, my girlfriend bet somewhere in his 60s. After one painfully unrecognizable song, my girlfriend whispered in to my ear, “I think you won this one.”
Dylan is 63 in terms of years lived, he is an old, old man in terms of his live performance.
Donning what looked to be an outfit stolen from a 1970s Texan oil baron, Dylan didn’t really take the stage, he more so crept into a corner near a keyboard of some sort, and hid there for the rest of the show. Dylan’s biggest problem, and at one time his greatest asset, is his voice. The homey twang that once identified Dylan as Dylan is gone, replaced by the screeching horror of a fork repeatedly shoved into a high-powered garbage disposal. Every time Dylan really went all out in trying to hit a note, I found myself cringing, yes actually cringing, in pain.
And that was just the beginning of Dylan’s live problems.
First off, Dylan doesn’t give a monkey’s penis about his fan’s anymore. He tore through a set of maybe seven songs – I recognized one of them. I was sure that it was just my lack of knowledge about Bob Dylan that prevented me from identifying these surely obscure musical treasures. But, the two drunken louts in front of me, who pre-show had been arguing about which Dylan song they thought he was going to start with, seemed equally as confused as Dylan struck up each new piece. There is a moment at rock concerts, at least the ones I’ve been too, right as a new song starts up where the crowd recognizes the song and cheers accordingly. This never happened. Not once the whole damn show. And it wasn’t that Dylan didn’t actually play any of his hits, after the show I was informed that I had been privy to both “Maggie’s Farm” and “It Ain’t You Babe” they were just so musically altered that I couldn’t actually recognize them.
The one song I did recognize? “All Along The Watchtower”, which sounded like Dylan had finished off his eight-ball of blow during the encore break. He sped through it, not with boundless energy, but with a seeming desperation to get the hell off the stage before his pacemaker stopped working.
The music was good. His band, led by a beautiful fiddle player, rocked out loud enough at times to make me forget that Bob Dylan sounded like a corpse farting. I found myself tapping along to the music, just not to the Bob Dylan music.
And that was the inherent problem. The show, aside from the old man resembling Dylan wheezing his final breaths away into a microphone, was an entertaining musical performance. I’m sure dancing hippies the world over would’ve loved to sway their dreadlocks to the pretty twanging emanating from the stage. Fuck that though, I paid sixty dollars to see Bob Dylan, and all I got was a half-dead old man and some no-name country mish-mash.
On a final side note: no one should ever perform music at the Chiles Center. It is a place for drunks to watch college basketball. The seats are so ridiculously uncomfortable that I found myself at times not paying attention to the music and instead the enormous cramp that was suffocating my ass.
Drinks consumed: one glass of water to help swallow the fucking horse pill of bitterness.
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Posted by H & IG at March 23, 2005 4:09 PM
