If you’ve been following my travel saga, you’ll know that I my daughter Katie and I converged on Boston from two different parts of the country yesterday in order to see Bob Dylan play at the Agganis Arena at Boston University. It was worth it, though I’m still not home and I need to get there in order to do laundry and head right back out on the road tomorrow.
The Raconteurs opened. This group is Jack White’s other band in addition to the White Stripes and they released an album called Broken Boy Soldiers. The set list covered most of that material with a couple of other songs thrown in. One of their more unusual yet better songs was a cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang, Bang, (My Baby Shot Me Down).” It was a great rock set.
Dylan played a bit longer than he had the previous three times we had seen him in the last couple of years, possibly because he was fitting in more of the new material from Modern Times. The set list was
- Maggie’s Farm
- She Belongs To Me
- Lonesome Day Blues
- Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
- It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
- Workingman’s Blues #2
- Tangled Up in Blue
- Blind Willie McTell
- Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)
- Ballad of Hollis Brown
- Highway 61 Revisited
- Spirit On The Water
- Summer Days
- Thunder On The Mountain
- Like a Rolling Stone
- All Along The Watchtower
The last three songs were the encore.
This was the best set list of any of the Dylan shows we had seen and included a couple of “essentials” that we had never heard live, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Tangled Up In Blue.”
Throughout the evening Dylan seemed to be having some technical issues. He walked off the stage to talk to a tech a couple of times and he spoke to rhythm guitarist Stu Kimball multiple times about adjusting the sound. Katie also said he forgot the lyrics a few times, but that’s hardly the first time that has happened. So, overall, it was a very good concert but probably not as tight as expected. Still, it was worth the trouble to get here.
Dylan needs to repent and turn back to Jesus and Christianity. That was the only really good music he ever produced in his life.
You should have caught both shows, Bob – Sunday night’s was sublime. I, too, have seen Dylan numerous times, going back, believe it or not, to the March on Washington, in August, 1963. And Sunday night at BU was one of the best shows ever. The set list was somewhat different, and included “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” “(Tales of Yankee Power) Senor,” “Positively 4th Street,” “Masters of War,” “Every Grain of Sand” – speaking of the Christian period, and “Tangled Up In Blue.” All of the songs were radically reworked – some with essentially new tunes, not just new arrangements. But unlike some Dylan shows where you leave shaking your head, wondering ‘what was THAT?’, almost every one of these worked. Okay, Masters of War wasn’t his most masterful – but it wasn’t bad. Some of the others, however, particularly Highway 61 and Positively 4th Street, were real killers. And in almost every case, the re-workings were successfully designed to make use of Dylan’s ‘voice’ as it is today, rather than as it was when he wrote the songs.
What particularly struck me last night about Dylan’s genius, and I don’t use the term at all lightly, is that not only does he have a catalogue of unparalleled poetry and music, but he is able to constantly reinvent it, and isn’t afraid to take his reinvention to audiences that yearn to hear the songs ‘the way they’re supposed to be played.’ He’s a musician, pure and simple, playing to play and taking no prisoners.
Does anyone have the list of songs he played on Sunday night, Nov. 12, at the Agganis Arena ? I went to that concert, didn’t recognize a few songs, but note that he definitely did NOT do the same list of songs both nights.
If anyone has a list I’d love to see it.
THANKS
Diane, it is here.