Bob Dylan who?

Bob Dylan live in concert sucks! I know it's virtually blasphemous for me to say this--a grave sin to his die-hard fans, at least--but it's just the plain truth. Well, it depends on what one's perception of an awesome concert should be. Coming home from the concert, I immediately did a little Googling to gauge people's experiences of seeing Dylan live. Not surprisingly, the answers mainly lay in two camps: either they detest the self-absorbed performer that he is or they argue that his stage performance is irrelevant and the genius of his music is the only thing that matters. For the latter camp, it's basically telling people to forget about Dylan the Performer and listen to Dylan the Poet. My only answer to that is if I want to LISTEN to Dylan the Poet, I'd rather not pay $67 to see him hunched over a keyboard for two hours when I could listen to his songs AT HOME sitting on the couch in my underwear (I'm kiddin' about the sitting on the couch part).

People go to a concert and willing to pay top bucks for it because they want to augment their listening experience and establish a deeper and more personal connection with the performer(s). If it's pure listening, why even bother go to concerts? Just download the songs and listen to them to your heart's content. By the way, here's a forum thread I found discussing Dylan's lack of showmanship and rapport with the audience. It's good to know that there are others who feel the same way too and having a legendary status does not absolve an artist from being a weak live performer. It seems to me that his live performance is best suited to intimate, danky, smoky bars, where he's surrounded by his coterie of aging fans.

It then gets me to the next point: Why, oh why did the concert promoters have Foo Fighters to open for Bob Dylan? Foo Fighters (especially Dave Grohl) was simply mesmerizing and more importantly, an exercise in contrast to Dylan's performance. Dave Grohl was highly engaging and extremely hilarious and he exploited every inch of the stage, even though it was an acoustic set throughout. Not that I expect Dylan to run around on the stage and crash into the drums; it'd be simply hideous and not to add, life-threatening for a 65-year old guy. The least he could do was to interact with the crowd and pivot around to face the bulk of the audience. Yes, I did say pivot around because for the whole time it was his bony ass that kept staring me in the face--and performed, for that matter. He was standing behind his keyboard with his back facing my side of the stage. I cannot feel more insulted, or to his hardcore fans in my section, more blessed! Anyway, the concert-goers were essentially divided into two generations: the young 'uns who went to see Foo Fighters and the aging Baby Boomers who went to pay homage to the Legend. What would be awesome if Dylan (or the concert promoters) used this opportunity to bridge the generational gap and get more young people to be interested in Bob Dylan and his poetries. How many young people were actually there to see Bob Dylan? I doubt they were that many. Before going to the concert I had this image of Dylan performing with Dave on stage, just like Trent Reznor and Johnny Cash or Neil Young and Eddie Vedder. Boy, was I setting myself up for a huge disappointment! It was a big missed opportunity for Bob Dylan. While I'm certain that his songs will endure well into the next few decades but personally, his live performance has definitely changed my perception of him--for the worse.

By the way, here's The Isthmus post-mortem article of the concert. A quote from the article:

"This is the new, reinvigorated Dylan. Whether he was leaning into his modest electric keyboard for a cantankerous reworking of "Maggie's Farm" or rocking out, legs splayed, to Muddy Waters' "Rollin' and Tumblin'" as his band mixed muscular, sweet-home-Chicago-style grooving with high-decibel rock 'n' roll, he was plainly having a damn good time.

Reinvigorated? Having a damn good time? I don't know what concert you went to, bub! It certainly ain't the one I was at. He looks more like a cadaver on keyboard to me...