I went to see Bob Dylan on Monday. I was at the show just as Hurricane Sandy was emptying its contents onto the East Coast. Dylan played most of his theme-appropriate songs, including "High Water Rising (For Charley Patton)," "Shelter from the Storm," and "The Levee's Gonna Break." Sadly, he did not play "the Hurricane," which is one of my favorite Dylan songs.
This was the third time I had seen Dylan. He was nowhere near as good as the opening act, Mark Knopfler, who seemed as magisterial as ever on guitar and vocals.
Vocally, well, I'm not going to say much about Dylan that hasn't already been said. Kinda sounds like Benicio del Toro in "the Usual Suspects," if he had spent the night with his throat connected to an air-conditioning vent on full blast.
A few folks commented that he just seemed lazy, and that he just "didn't give a fuck" anymore. I don't think that's true, however. He seems strangely averse to enunciation, for sure, but his performance did not show lack of interest. Most notably, he performed a new (or at least new to me) arrangement of every song he in his set list. It would have been much easier for Dylan to play the version everyone knows and the one he's played countless times before. But he took the time to draw up new arrangements and rehearse them with his band. That's a lot harder than alternative, even if it's less crowd pleasing.
The arrangements were uniformly engaging, from my perspective, although not particularly melodic. Perhaps melody is simply something he doesn't aspire to any longer. Though I suppose melody might just be hard to come by with his limited focal range these days.
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