Why go see Bob Dylan two nights in a row? Well to hear more than a dozen different songs than you heard the night before – each one of them packed with little surprises, twists and evolutions that make the Dylan songbook the marvelous organic thing it is in live shows.
Wednesday at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., the band wore matching silvery suits and little fedoras compared to the matching tan suits and cowboy hats of the night before at the Pines Theatre in Look Park, just outside of Northampton, Mass.
That didn’t make this the city mouse show more than yesterday was the country mouse show. But there were contrasts between the two performances – and only two songs in common aside from the two encore songs.
“Cat’s in the Well” returned to the opening song, where it’s been most of the last year. A lovely acoustic based “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” followed, the first of two “Alright” songs in the set that would include the current tour standard “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” just two songs later (apparently missing the “president has to stand naked” line that went over so well the night before – or did I just miss it?).
It was an odd crowd, compared to the laid back laissiez faire of the night before, with some fans sitting, some lounging and some boogying at will. Never do I recall a Dylan show where everyone was sitting from virtually the beginning to end. Are we that old? Has it come to this? And that’s despite the insistence and verve of most of the set.
“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” “To Ramona,” “Ballad of a Thin Man” and “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” were all wonderful to hear, each packing just a trace of the riffs and main melodies that made them distinguished musically as they were lyrically.
But a couple of songs were performed quite like the original recordings, almost astonishingly so from a guy from whom rearrangement has been his performance byword. “Just Like a Woman” had the lilting opening phrase in such good form, the crowd actually sang along to the chorus, with a swell of voices subtly singing “Just Like a Woman” as Dylan spat a terse “Just like a woman” with a phrasing just as distinct -- it was a nice blend of both worlds.
“Blowin’ in the Wind,” as odd a main set stopper as you can hear (coming after the more practical pizzazz of “Summer Days”), also retained its structure such that fans could hum along mentally if not sing along physically to the tune.
The newer tunes, of course, had evolved least of all, so it was great to hear “Rollin’ and Tumblin,” “Moonlight,” and “Til I Fell in Love with You” all back to back and later in the set, the lilting “Spirit on the Water” with its rhetorical questions about being over the hill, showing him what you got and having a whomping good time.
Which was had by all.
Opening act Jimmy Vaughan was a welcome change from the night before – almost a worthy tradeoff for the lack of outdoors, fresh air and nature. The stinging guitarist and roadhouse hero was far better than the morose and derivative warblings of one Sarabeth Tucek on Tuesday, the worst Dylan opener I’d heard since the metalloid version of Mercury Rev bounded off the walls of Woolsey Hall in Yale in the 1991.
Artists of the finest caliber would clamber to open for Dylan for the honor, never mind the money. So there’s no reason for sub par performers.
Vaughan, who also opened many shows last summer, brought a passel of fine roadhouse tunes, the sassy singer Lou Ann Barton, and a surprisingly accurate weather report from his homeland: “Texas Flood.”
The set list for Bob Dylan Wednesday was:
- “Cat’s in the Well”
- “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”
- “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”
- “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”
- “To Ramona”
- “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”
- “Moonlight”
- “’Til I Fell in Love With You”
- “Just Like a Woman”
- “Highway 61 Revisited”
- “Ballad of a Thin Man”
- “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”
- “Spirit on the Water”
- “Summer Days”
- “Blowin’ in the Wind”
(encore) - “Thunder on the Mountain”
- “All Along the Watchtower”
Roger -
Bob did indeed sing the "naked president" line, though he ran through the song quite rapidly, so I'm not suprised you missed it, though, as I said to you the other night, I'm a little surprised you missed in the Nixon-drenched '74 tour with the Band!
Posted by: Eric Hoffman | June 29, 2007 at 03:53 PM