Dylan in Concert
(I hadn’t intended to make this a Bob Dylan blog, but it seems that’s what it’s becoming)
Bob Dylan - Sioux Falls Stadium, Sioux Falls SD 9/8/06
Yakko came along with me, and was generally positive about the experience. There was a little complaining and the usual 8.4 questions per minute for first half hour or so of Dylan’s set, but by the end “Highway 61″ and “Summer Days” had him dancing and forgetting how cold it was.
Having trouble putting coherent sentences together, so here are random thoughts on the show:
I was very impressed with the band. Dylan said in the Rolling Stone interview that it was the best he’d had, and it would be hard to argue.
Bob’s voice was in pretty good form, and he generally refrained from spitting out three lines of lyrics at a time as he sometimes does.
There’s always a temptation to dwell on the omissions. I always have a mental list of a few songs I would love to hear when I walk in, and in almost every case at least some of them get skipped. It’s not fair, but it still happens. Tonight, no “Tangled Up In Blue,” no “Things Have Changed,” and nothing from “Oh Mercy.” Ah me.
The definite high points of the night for me were the violin-laced arrangement of “It’s Alright Ma” and a scorching stomp through “Love Sick.”
“Watching The River Flow” and “Desolation Row” were dead on. “My Back Pages” would have benefitted from being a little slower, but it was still a good take.
Jimmy Vaughn, gods bless him, is in retirement mode. His second guitarist took half the solos, he had a female vocalist take half the singing duties, and he just pretty much phoned it in. He did do an admirable job channelling his late brother on “Texas Flood.”
It’s interesting (to me, anyway) that the arrangements of “Stuck Inside Of Mobile” and “Lay Lady Lay”–which had morphed so much over the years–have now morphed right back to sounding a great deal like their original album takes.
His sunburst finish guitar was placed on stage but was never played. Ironically, at his first Sioux Falls show in 1990 there was a piano on stage that he never played.
September 8th, 2006 - Posted in Music, Parentgeekness | |
