|
Taking
It All In
By
David Greenberger
Bob Dylan and His Band, Elvis Costello
Times
Union Center, Oct. 6
Besides having created towering bodies of work as musical
artists, Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello both understand the
dynamics of show business. Though their public debuts were
a decade and a half apart, they each found reason to jettison
their given names in exchange for identities that would create
a desired effect in the marketplace. The erstwhile misters
Zimmerman and MacManus appeared on the same bill last Saturday
at the Times Union Center (with Amos Lee in the unenviable
position of having to play a short set of recently minted
songs for an audience awaiting the confluence of memory and
moment to goose them into a middle-aged high). Though they
didn’t take the stage together at any point during the night,
their adjacent sets allow for some thoughts on their similarities
and differences.
Both men had powerful managers who succeeded in positioning
them well from the outset, creating a base that allowed each
of them to pursue their artistic inclinations, long after
having parted ways (Dylan’s being Albert Grossman, Costello’s
Jake Riviera). However, while generally faithful to their
creative instincts, they each have made unsuccessful albums,
failing because of their misguided attempts to either regain
or enlarge their commercial standing. Dylan has had a handful
of scattershot attempts (among them, Down in the Groove,
Under the Red Sky, and Dylan and the Dead),
while Costello needed to bottom out with Goodbye Cruel
World before regaining his bearings. Other than a brief
excursion over to David Geffen’s company in the ’70s, Dylan
has spent the entirety of his career on Columbia Records,
the same label on which Costello made his initial and largest
splash (he left in 1986, after his 11th album).
Playing in an arena gave a certain regimentation to the night’s
momentum. Costello’s 45-minute solo set was greeted with honest
cheers that would have brought him back for an encore were
it not for the lights coming up to quell the elation. His
set included his earliest song (“Radio Sweetheart”) and a
couple so new that they’ve not yet been released (“Down Among
the Wines and Spirits” and “From Sulfur to Sugarcane,” co-written
with T-Bone Burnett). This scribe’s favorite Costello number,
“Blue Chair,” even made the list. Costello happily used the
cavernous room’s acoustics, letting his voice linger on notes
to bounce off the rafters. Though he was one man with a guitar,
he presented himself not as a troubadour, but as a songwriter,
inferring the songs’ larger arrangement possibilities and
relishing the grooves. His outrage at the ongoing war in Iraq,
as well as governmental failures at home, informed some of
his choice of material as well as between-song anecdotes and
observations. Songs such as “The River in Reverse” and “The
Scarlet Tide” carry incredible power because he eschews sloganeering
for poetic resonance or human-scaled narratives.
Dylan has done something that very few 60-plus artists achieve:
He’s continued to replenish his audience with younger listeners.
In his case this has been essential to the vitality of his
ongoing tour, because it’s the audience members who are his
own generational peers that grouse the most about the performances.
Their complaints (“I didn’t recognize the song,” “His words
were garbled,” etc.) simply describe their need for music
to reassure, rather than challenge or surprise. Dylan has
created songs so durable that they can disappear behind the
engine of a great band. The songs become a means for six people
to align themselves together in time and space and create
an energy that would be different in any other configuration
and in any other moment. Musical enrichment of that order
is a rare commodity, and Dylan makes a case for it every time
he takes the stage. No two nights are the same, and some are
better than others, just like life itself. What we want from
a Dylan concert is transcendence. It’s hard to pull that off
in an arena, but he certainly hit his fall-back position:
a great performance.
 |
It’s
a Wash
Bob Dylan and His Band, Elvis Costello
Times
Union Center, Oct. 6
The following overheard ex change, between two college-age
kids outside the bathroom at the Times Union Center, perfectly
sums up my feelings on Saturday night’s Bob Dylan fiasco.
Kid No. 1: “I guess I expected his voice to not be all that
great.”
Kid No. 2: “Dude, Dylan sucks.”
I’m not being irreverent just for irreverence’s sake; Dylan
really does not have “it” anymore. Hasn’t in 20-some-odd years.
Maybe it’s some character he’s playing (that might explain
the weird pencil moustache), or maybe it’s just Dylan being
Dylan—either way, it doesn’t click. I’m not looking for him
to be the dust-bowl folkie of the early ’60s or even the Rolling
Thunder minstrel boy of the mid-’70s, but just a glimmer of
the Infidels-era fist-shaking would be nice. Instead,
we’ve been fed the same semi-coherent freakshow for a quarter-century.
We’re often told that we should appreciate what he is rather
than what he was, that merely his appearance should warrant
the utmost praise. That’s all bullshit: The only reason we’re
still kissing Bob Dylan’s ass is because we’re afraid each
record and/or live performance could be his last. (I’m looking
at you, Rolling Stone—five-stars for Modern Times,
my ass.)
Granted, after singing “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”
for more than four decades, pretty much anyone would seem
less than enthusiastic about rolling it out on a nightly basis.
But on Saturday, that was one of the few recognizable tunes,
and only for its chord progression. The lion’s share of Dylan’s
set found the old man pitching a sub-Tom Waits grumble at
his most tuneful numbers: “Simple Twist of Fate,” for one,
was completely unrecognizable until the turnaround at the
very end of the verse. And the band, as strong as each player
might have been, failed to generate any real heat—imagine
if Letterman’s Late Show band decided to play only
late-period Grateful Dead covers. Sounds good, sure, but the
Dead still suck.
The get-up-and-go-home moment came during “Masters of War.”
To paraphrase my companion that evening: If a song has eight
verses, I’d better be able to understand every damn word.
I sure as hell shouldn’t have to wonder “Is this ‘Highway
61’?” three minutes into a song. Maybe I just don’t dig the
blues, but I’d rather listen to the Wallflowers. (Incidentally,
opener Amos Lee did a pretty good Jakob Dylan impression.)
To provide contrast, or just because he could, Dylan asked
Elvis Costello along on his current tour. Now here’s an example
of growing old gracefully: At 53, Costello still displays
the fiery passion of his early years, and his solo set showed
that he’s not only his generation’s most versatile songwriter,
but one of its best singers, too, evidenced by both his way-underutilized
falsetto on “Either Side of the Same Town” and the triumphant
closing fanfare of “Veronica.” He told stories, waxed political,
quoted the Who and Lennon and Def Leppard, and fucked up the
chords to “Oliver’s Army,” all with trademark showmanship
and vigor.
Is it too late to trade in Dylan’s entire set for another
40 minutes of Elvis?
Damn.
—John
Brodeur
Hot and Bothered
Bob Dylan and His Band, Elvis Costello
Times
Union Center, Oct. 6
“Don’t
expect anything of Bob Dylan, he has done enough!” wrote an
indignant fan in the comments section of a local newspaper’s
Web site recently, defending the artist from a review that
was a bit one-sided in its trashing of Dylan’s recent show
at the Times Union Center. The fan’s comment was overly defensive,
sure, but held a grain of truth: To seek enjoyment from Dylan’s
present work, rather than from his Newport Folk Festival-flouting
distant past, you have to let go of your expectations.
If you lionize the guy for his history as an artist who defies
expectations and always follows his own path, than maybe you
should accept certain things. Such as his right to show up
onstage in a mariachi outfit, barking out lyrics in an even
gruffer voice than usual, while leading a purple-suited band
through nearly unrecognizable versions of classic songs like
“Simple Twist of Fate” and “Highway 61 Revisited.” Personally,
I’m OK with all that. From where I sat, the crowd was fairly
indulgent too, for a time, cheering whenever Dylan got anywhere
near a familiar musical phrase. (A friend of mine, seated
in a different section of the arena, afterward relayed a story
about a concertgoer who was so enthusiastic, yet so alarmingly
oblivious, that she yelled out “That Dylan sure can sing!”
during Elvis Costello’s opening set.)
Other facets of the show that bothered people, such as Dylan’s
near-total lack of interaction with the audience, weren’t
a deal-breaker for me. Positioned sideways to the stage in
front of his keyboard for much of the time, he acknowledged
the crowd only once, with a scant “Thank you” late in the
set. Hell, he barely even looked up from his keyboard. That’s
fine, I’m sure it wasn’t personal. And the song choices, heavy
on more recent material, were OK too, as the mature wisdom
and rollicking roadhouse vibe of his last three albums have
their own charms.
But, that said, there was little actual enjoyment to be found
during this show. The arena setting didn’t help. To relieve
boredom, I kept trying to imagine the same show in a roadhouse
somewhere, where you wander in off the highway and stumble
upon Dylan and his crack band jamming out to this unheard
version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” Now that would
be a surreal and mind-blowing experience. Instead, we were
left to sweat in an unbearably hot arena, which had no air
conditioning despite the unseasonably hot and humid weather,
while the crowd grew increasingly squirrelly and restless,
some walking out early.
And with no concessions made by Dylan and company to make
the arena conditions more tolerable—such as screen monitors
for those in the back to get a closer glimpse of the action—watching
Dylan and his band jam out strictly to their own tune onstage,
without feeding off or acknowledging the crowd at all, started
to feel strangely like an off-putting, voyeuristic exercise.
Nothing is more rousing these days than an acerbic antiwar
song, and when you find yourself straining to hope that “Masters
of War”—perhaps the best antiwar song ever written—will be
more electrifying than it is, that’s not good.
—Kirsten
Ferguson
I Was There
Bob Dylan and His Band, Elvis Costello
Times
Union Center, Oct. 6
Bob Dylan has built a catalogue of lyrics that stand as rock
music’s greatest contribution to literature, but his uncanniest
achievement has always been his relentless self-invention
(the forthcoming movie I’m Not There seems to be a
long overdue meditation on this aspect of Dylanology). For
the last 15 years or so, Dylan has become the grizzled bluesman
he’s seemingly always wanted to be, the folkie in blue jeans
just another legend lost to time. Ambling on stage, Stratocaster
in hand, leading his fedora-topped gang of desperados into
a jaunt through “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,” Dylan seemed
right at home, his fingers shaking out little blues licks
to join the bent notes of steel guitarist Donnie Herron and
lead player Denny Freeman. Dylan stayed out front for a textbook
rendition of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and a jammy
“Watching the River Flow” before retreating to his electric
keyboard for the remainder of the concert.
One of conventional wisdom’s biggest falsehoods is that Dylan
could never sing—I direct the jury to the New Morning and
Street Legal albums in an effort to refute this claim.
The only thing is, conventional wisdom is now correct: Dylan’s
voice has become monotonous and nearly tuneless, and is the
biggest reason why I personally can find no use for his last
two, near-universally acclaimed “comeback” albums. In concert,
this can be overlooked, especially during the songs that don’t
suffer from his declamatory cadence. Like many of Dylan’s
newer tunes, Love and Theft’s “Summer Days” uses the
blues trope of repeating the first line of each verse, making
a song of eight-plus verses almost insufferable, especially
when it is simply Dylan bellowing braggadocious shit to a
woman half his age. Yet classics like “Masters of War” and
“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” have only gained power
and relevance over the long stumble of years since they were
written, Dylan’s death rattle taking on the befitting tone
of the accusatory prophet.
Ironically, as one who hardly ever listens to latter-day Dylan
on record, the song that I found most effective this night
was “Workingman’s Blues #2,” from last year’s Modern Times.
It seemed to sum up Dylan’s current philosophy the best: “You
can hang back/Or fight your best on the front line/Sing a
little bit of these workingman’s blues.” The so-called Never
Ending Tour seems to be a way for Dylan to make sure he’ll
die with his boots on.
—Mike
Hotter
|
Site
Search 
