Got There

In the creeping dusk, I got offered a ticket to go see my man Bob Dylan tonight!



Way out west!



Dylan destroys his hits. His band are supremely skilled, and you're left hanging on every word as Bob re-interprets the songs that were forged into timelessness by just him a guitar and a mouth harp. It's not a religious experience. It's not an old troubador going taxidermist on his back catalogue. It's not an old man pretending he can still do what you remember him doing. It is an awesome rock concert. That's what you get. The rock versions. Even anthems like "All Along The Watchtower" "Highway 61" and "Just Like A Woman" sound like he made them in modern times.

Billed as Bob Dylan and His Band (not The Band), the old man smirks and grimaces at his organ. He gets his sway and swag back as he channels harmonica solos - even through long black coat you can see his septugenarian hips swinging - and leads his band.

Protest folk like "Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall" and "Chimes of Freedom" are augmented by fighter jet burning up in the startospher electric guitar jams. All of Dylan's words are played back to him, in guitar, by his band. There is a dialogue that breathes new life into songs that have timeless lyrics, but whose pluck and twang would seem antiquated in the current climate of critical ideas and crucial change.

When he strides into "Like A Rolling Stone" it dawns that Dylan is nothing like The Rolling Stones. The tight pants, never let go, scarves and whiskey image that the Stones plod through, around the world, regularly...it's fake...and Dylan is real. He's adapted. The art of adaptation links us to the animals, but man-oh-man when an artist can just be old, but more importantly DO OLD, the age takes the timeless material and weaves it into the fabric of right now. He doesn't need to, but Bob Dylan is sewing the field of fans, plugging in and proving what he still means to rock.

This was the best song of the night, I'll let Chan take us out with it...