Bob Dylan in Brooklyn

This week I chalked another artist off my "People to see before they die" list when I dragged my arse over to Brooklyn to see Bob Dylan play in Prospect Park.

I am a huge Dylan fan and I have no real excuse for never having seen him before other than laziness and I'd heard his live shows are awful these days. Well, it wasn't awful... but it wasn't exactly great either. It was eh... interesting.

The day started good as I got off the train in the West Village and walked down 4th Street over towards Washington Square Park. The cover of "The Freewheelin Bob Dylan" was shot on the corner of 4th and Jones Street so I played that to get myself in the mood. It sounded good.



By the time I had hiked over to Brooklyn I had work my way through Freewheelin, some Rolling Thunder bootlegs from 1975 and Blood on the Tracks. I was well in the mood for Mr Zimmerman.

About 45 minutes after my friend and I got into the park, this little guy in a black suit and a grey hat shuffled on stage with his band, sat behind the keyboard and started belting out "Rainy Day Woman 12 & 35" with it's chorus of "Everybody let's get stoned" and the crowd sang along. It was an exciting and spine chilling moment. Unfortunately that was as good as it got.

After that he proceeded to perform EVERY song in the same boogie tempo in his staccato singing voice that today resembles a man with throat cancer, a mouthful of marbles and a punctured lung. Classic songs like "Girl from the North Country" and "Blowing in the Wind" become unrecognizable until you suddenly catch a familiar line 3/4 of the way through and realize "HOLY SHIT! THAT'S MY FAVORITE SONG OF ALL TIME!".

Which is exactly what happened to me with "Masters of War".

Now, I wasn't expecting Dylan to come out with an acoustic guitar and perform the song the same way he did in the 60's, I'm not Pete Seeger with an axe or a Manchunian with a desire to shout "Judas" (although I did consider doing this for a laugh). I also admire artists who re-interpret their work so it sounds different - Neil Young has done this brilliantly many times, most recently last year when I saw him in concert and he played a solo version of "Mellow my Mind" on the banjo - I would just like the songs to be at least intelligible.

My friend, who has seen a few recent Dylan shows, was able to call out some of the song titles to me within the first few lines but for all the good it did me I might well have been listening someone singing underwater in Yiddish.

But hell, it's Bob Dylan, I give him a little bit of a free pass. The fact that I can't bring myself to hate the performance tells me he struck some kind of nerve with me, I'm just not sure what. I find myself thinking I want to see the show again to see if I understand it better the second time. Unfortunately I don't think I would.