Bobcat Nation:
Memoirs of a Young
Bob Dylan Fan
by Adam Selzer
Contents:
CHAPTER ONE:
By Way of Introduction
CHAPTER TWO:
A Brief Dylan Bio
CHAPTER THREE:
I Was a Teenage Bobcat
CHAPTER FOUR:
The Old, Weird America
Dalton and Atlanta GA, 2001
CHAPTER FIVE
Love, Theft, and Those Dutch Sailors' Eyes
Nashville 2001
CHAPTER SIX
Adam and Mike's Excellent Adventure
Newport Folk Festival 2002
CHAPTER SEVEN
Risking Your Life for the Rail
The Atlanta Lightning Storm, 2003
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cowboys and Hippies
Dylan and the Dead 2003 tour
CHAPTER NINE
We Can All Be Famous
For Fifteen People
Chicago and Atlanta, 2004
DYLAN REVIEWS
2005-Present
Chapter Nine:
We Can All Be Famous For Fifteen People
Throughout my years in college, I'd put a lot of thought into what city I'd live in after graduating - it certainly wasn't going to be Milledgeville, Snellville, or Carrollton. After meeting Martin Van Nostrand, I thought that Montclair, New Jersey, seemed like it might be nice. Pittsburgh seemed like a nice city. But my first choice, ever since my trip to see Tom Waits, had always been Chicago. The days I spent happily "urban camping" on a whirlwind tour of downtown coffeeshops in the couple of days that followed the Joliet show had cemented things this was the city for me. I wouldn't even need a car, eliminating the possibility of breaking down in Alabama again. Should I ever drive through Alabama again, it would be in a safe rental car that had far, far under 200,000 miles on it and probably wasn't prone to needing the fuel pump relay switch replaced every so often. As an added bonus, I could go to Dylan concerts not only in the Chicago area, but in several nearby cities, such as Milwaukee. Making three or four shows per tour would be far less of a hassle. It frightened me a bit to think that this was one of the criteria I used for selecting a place to live, but, having lived in a glorified shack in Milledgeville for two years, living next door to drug dealers who had a family living in a trailer in their back yard (a family who liked to burn things. a lot.), I reasoned that I'd paid my dues.
When Dylan announced a tour of small venues across the U.S. in Spring of 2004, Mike and I were tempted to make a trip up to one of the Chicago shows, but Mike wasn't going to be able to make it.
Then, one day, I was speaking online to Tristan, the guy I'd met at the Birmingham show, and he happened to mention that he was planning to move to Chicago at the end of the summer.
This seemed almost too convenient; if we got a place together, we could save a fortune. Moving up by myself, with just a few limited contacts and no real bank account of which to speak, was daunting to say the least. Having someone with whom to split the rent and utility bills would make things much, much easier on both of us.
So, to make sure that we actually got along as well as we expected to, we arranged to go to two of the shows in Chicago, one at the 3000 seat Riviera Theatre, and one at the 2000 seat Vic Theatre. Sam and John had also arranged to go to those shows, plus one the night before. I e-mailed Sam, asking if he wanted to sample some of Chicago's famous, deep-dish pizza. I could almost hear him laughing in his reply. "Selzer," he wrote, "how can we meet for lunch? You know very well that we have to be in line by noon at the latest!"
So on March 7th, I flew up to Chicago for the second time in about six months, and, upon arrival, immediately made my way to The Loop, the downtown area, where I scouted out a place to get a Chicago-style hot dog, as had become my usual custom. Chicago hot dogs are not like the hot dogs you get elsewhere; the proper ones are bright red and sort of spicy, unlike the dull, salty things you get at the grocery store, and served on a poppy-seed bun with mustard, onions, tomato wedges, a sport pepper, bright green relish, a pickle spear, and celery salt. And, for one reason or another, it can't be duplicated outside of Chicago. A few places around Atlanta have tried to sell Chicago-style dogs, and one such place even opened in Milledgeville, but the results ranged from "pretty close" all the way to "disastrous." The one in Milledgeville tried to add ketchup to my hot dog, and adding ketchup to a Chicago hot dog is like putting anchovies in cole slaw.
Properly fed, I hopped onto a train and rode off to the Riviera theatre, staring out the window at the city that I'd chosen to be my own.
Chicago was set up in such a way that I'd never managed to get lost there, even without having too much of an idea of where I was going. When I moved there, I wouldn't even need a car; life without a car is practically unheard of in Atlanta, where the average daily commute is more than thirty miles. And the architecture is stunning; even the suburbs look pretty nice compared to the boring subdivisions that make up suburban Atlanta. The subdivisions had their advantages; they were a pizza delivery-man's paradise (after six months delivering in Milledgeville, I'd taken to driving back up to the suburbs every weekend, where the work was five times more lucrative and twenty times more pleasant), but, any way you slice it, they were pretty boring.
It took only about ten or fifteen minutes to get to the Riviera, where Sam, who had been there since eight o'clock in the morning, introduced me around to the early-birds. A couple of people instantly recognized me as the guy whose hat had sprung a leak at Music Midtown the previous year.
Among the fans outside the venue was Jenny Ledeen, a woman who was selling copies of her Dylan book, entitled Prophecy in the Christian Era. It was a collection of academic essays, detailing Dylan's imagery in storms, and visions, so she claimed, of the Messiah arriving in a ship (the white dove in "Blowin' in the Wind," the fish truck in "Visions of Johanna," etc) in the midst of a great storm. A little out-there, perhaps, but definitely an interesting way to look at things. I've already mentioned that I think Dylan will one day be seen as a prophet; the wheels are already in motion.
I killed most of my early afternoon talking to John, who was not exactly thrilled with the fact that, thanks to Sam, he was spending his whole time in Chicago standing around outside of venues, but was having a good time. "'Every Grain of Sand' has been coming up now and then," he said. "We have a good chance at hearing it tonight."
I also talked for a while with a Chicago-area fellow named Ron, who remembered being out of the country when Bob had opened his 1974 tour his first tour in eight years in Chicago.
"I was in Mexico with my brother," he said, "and I remember thinking what am I doing here? I could be home seeing Bob Dylan!"
Tristan showed up and joined me in line a few hours later, and we sat discussing moving plans for a good long while before overhearing that the people in front of us in line were saving a spot for Bill Pagel.
Bill Pagel is one of the best known figures in Dylan fandom, the keeper of the illustrious "BobDates" webpage, which is usually the first page to announce details of upcoming concerts, and almost always the first, and most reliable, to post the setlist when a concert is over. Setlists posted ahead of Pagel are never considered to be legit until they've been verified by Pagel.
More importantly, Pagel had made a few headlines a couple of years earlier by buying Dylan's boyhood home in Duluth, Minnesota for $82,000. Even most true hardcore fans thought that this was extreme to the point of being a little disturbing, but, on the other hand, getting a house for $82,000 wasn't that bad of a deal, considering the average housing prices in 2001.
The people in front talked to him ahead of time, regarding my request to interview him for this book, but he wasn't up to being interviewed, possibly because he knew I'd probably bring up the whole business about buying the house on ebay, which would be hard for your average journalist to do without making him look a little bit nuts (though I don't find him to be nuts in the least).
When Pagel emerged, the only thing I was able to do was comment on the piece of paper he held in his hand.
"Don't tell me that's the setlist already!" I joked.
"Sure is," he said, "but I can't give it out early because it might screw up the pool."
So there it was. A face to face encounter with Bill Pagel, king of the American Dylan fans, and the only thing I'd learned was that his name was pronounced "Pay-gull." Like "bagle." Some journalist I turned out to be.
Shortly thereafter, the band's bus pulled around the corner, and we ran around to watch the band go into the venue. Most of them ignored the cheers, acting very professional and paying no mind to the wackos. But when Freddy came out, I was moved to shout out "Freddy, we love you!" and he turned, waved, and gave me one of his classic silly grins.
The line got to be like a little party; something that doesn't happen at every show. Tristan and I met a fellow named Tucker who graciously let us put our bags in his car, everyone seemed to be friends with everyone else. John commented that, while waiting nearly twelve hours for a show to start wasn't exactly his idea of a good time, the lineup was much more fun than it had been the day before.
As usually happens, the line began to tighten up and get crowded in the last hour or so, and soon we were introduced to a mullet-bearing security guard with a moustache he'd probably had since 1977. He came to be known as Crabby Carl. Crabby Carl's hobby appeared to be barking.
"All right!" he barked. "You've all behaved pretty well so far. If you keep on behaving, we'll get you into the venue!"
I got the idea that Crabby Carl's goal in life had been either to be a gym teacher or the guy that talks to kids who get sent to jail overnight on in "Scared Straight" programs. The one who barks out "you're gonna get your candy-asses raped the first night!" Apparently his grades hadn't been good enough, because, instead, he had become a security guard. We all must have behaved pretty well, because he ended up being so kind as to let us pass without even the customary beat-down or warning that our asses would be grass.
Inside, Tristan and I ended up standing in about the second or third row, right next to Sam (whose arriving at eight am, several hours before us, hadn't gotten him much of a better place). Right in front of us, however, was a woman often known as the infamous Woman In the Cowboy Hat. She is seen in the front at many shows, dancing back and forth, up and down, in a sort of sideways pogo fashion, throughout the entire show, even the slow songs. More than one person had spent an entire show trying to see around her. She's a nice person, but I certainly wouldn't recommend standing behind her at a show.
This time, however, she had more room, as the person next to me, a large asshole with tie-dyed socks, refused to let anyone near the space around her.
"I love it when you stand behind me," she said.
"Just doing my job," he replied, probably hoping she'd sleep with him at some point. Sometimes you can just tell.
Meanwhile, a few older women behind me were about to start a fight with a guy who had the nerve to try to get closer to a friend of his who had a better spot, and another who had left to get a drink. One woman got horribly pissed, apparently thinking I was one of the people who was trying to get in front of her.
"Fuck you!" the old lady shouted in my ear. She then grabbed my ass, perhaps to get me started.
"The natives are restless," the Asshole in the Tie-Dyed Socks commented to me.
"Yeah," I said. "You have to realize that when you leave the floor to get a drink, you may not be able to make it back on these general admission shows."
"Well," he said, smugly, "if I leave, I'll be coming back." He then helped summon security to report someone else who was doing just that. I'd met his type before, usually at science fiction conventions. The type who compensated for being generally disliked all through high school (by guys like Crabby Carl) by learning a lot about mideval torture and whose greatest moment came when they realized that their girth could be intimidating to puny Earthlings like me. It worked; I knew that wearing a hippie guise didn't necessarily make him peaceful, and elected not to start a fight with him.
But as soon as Dylan began playing, the son of a bitch began to dance around. I spent the better part of the first few songs, including "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol," which I'd been wanting to see live for years, trying to avoid his head, which flopped around mercilessly. I wasn't always successful; he knocked his head directly into mine a few times. My polite requests that he be careful were politely ignored.
All of this, however, couldn't cover up the fact that it was a pretty exciting concert. Midway through, Bob and the band started an intro that would later be described as an "Indian War Chant" beat, a slow, repeating rhythm not unlike the the slow section from "All Along the Watchtower."
I looked at Tristan, who shrugged. We both looked at Sam, who also shrugged, then grinned widely. This was the sort of moment the hardcore Dylan fans lived for Dylan was playing a song, and, three or four bars into the intro, we didn't know which song it was!
Then, Bob began to sing, and things got even more confusing, when the first words out of his mouth were "you must leave now, take what you need...."
That was the first line to "It's All over Now, Baby Blue." A song that he'd already played. Was he playing two totally different arrangements of the song in the same show?
After less than a line, Dylan corrected his mistake, and launched into the lyrics from "It Ain't Me Babe," debuting what may have been the strangest arrangement of the song ever, out of nearly countless arrangements over the years. There was the original, acoustic version, the early duets with Joan Baez, the rocked-up mid '65 version, the hard-rocking Rolling Thunder version, and countless acoustic arrangements throughout the 80's and 90's. But nothing that sounded like a mixture of Tom Waits' "Downtown Train" and an Indian War Chant.
The show was good, but not great. Dylan screwed up the lyrics to a few songs, and once ambled out to the center microphone, normally used only to introduce the band, and tried to sing "Every Grain of Sand" from the center, without an instrument. This lasted about one line before he bolted back to behind the keyboard, missing a line or two in the process. The act was repeated at the beginning "All Along the Watchtower," where he sang one line from the center of the stage, then began to look flustered. He pantomimed playing a guitar for a second, then shrugged and sort of chuckled, as though he just couldn't figure out what to do with his hands without a guitar, and wandered back to the keyboard.
As we left, I asked Tristan if he'd be interested in sitting at the balcony at the next show, where we could sit down and avoid the hustle and bustle.
"I'm game," he said.
We met up with Tucker to get our bags, then hooked up with Sam and John, and the four of us went to find a pizza place that was still open, where we sat, discussing the show of the evening.
Sam, as usual, seemed thrilled, as did John. "Every Grain of Sand" had been the song he most hoped to hear, and Bob had played it.
Overall, it had been a good show. There was a good arrangement of the rarely-heard "Down Along the Cove," and the new, "Elizabethan" arrangement of "Girl From the North Country" was very cool, recalling the song's origins in the ancient Childe Ballad "Scarborough Fair."
From there, Tristan and I took a bus to the south side, where we had arranged to stay the night at the cheapest place in town, a little place called Fat Johnnie's Last Resort Home Hostel, which would cost us $15 a night. Very little info on the place had been available on the internet, except for one review that mentioned that, if you brought a six pack, there was a chance that you could get Fat Johnnie to dance.
In reality, the place was a bit of a letdown. Fat Johnnie didn't seem at all like the dancing sort; in fact, he wasn't even all that fat. He was a fairly surly fellow, though he was nice enough to give us a map of the city with all of the dangerous areas highlighted. A quick inspection of the map showed that just about every part of the city was highlighted, but we were sort of under the impression that Johnny didn't really get out very often.
We shared our upstairs room with one guy, a shirtless fellow who lost no time introducing himself.
"I'm Pedro. I'm a fuckin' mechanic, man. I fix cars, I fuckin' buy cars. Fuckin' sell them."
"Where are you from?" I asked.
"Here, man. Fuckin' Chicago. I've been living here about a month....there's some fuckin' girls in the other room, man. But Johnny don't let me bring girls here no more."
We never found out if there were actually any girls present, and didn't ask why, if he lived in town, Pedro had been staying at Fat Johnnie's for over a month. I figured that no matter what he answered, it would probably make me less interested in sharing a room with him.
We snuck out early in the morning and headed straight for the nearest bus stop. Fat Johnnie's was about what I expected it to be, and I would have gone back. I'd recommend it to anyone who needs a really cheap place to crash in Chicago but doesn't care too much about ammenities.
Tristan, however, was not anxious to go back. And he'd been known to sleep in cornfields. The night of the Birmingham show, he, Bryan, and Amira had slept in a not-quite-built skeleton of a house that they'd found.
We spent most of the day hanging around with an old friend of mine, a guy named Matt who'd lived next door to me through most of elementary school and now lived in downtown Chicago, right near the spot where I hoped to live. Fate, it seemed, had determined to make us neighbors once again. One day, I'm sure that I'll be sitting in the rec room of a nursing home, telling people stories about travelling through New Jersey with Peter Stone Brown, and I'll see them wheeling Matt into the room next door.
We ended up showing up at the Vic in late afternoon, and hung around outside, talking with Tucker for a while about life in Chicago and waiting for the band to arrive. When they did, Tony, breaking character, looked at all of the people standing in the coldest weather I'd felt since moving to Atlanta, and said "what are you people doing?" with a laugh.
It was cold that day snowing and everything. Probably colder than any weather I'd felt since moving away from the midwest certainly not weather made for standing around in a line. Luckily, I had spent a solid week driving around Milledgeville looking for gloves and a hat no mean feat in a town where most people owned neither. The only pair of gloves I found were a color that I could charitably call "burgundy," which I would only do to keep me from calling them "dark pink." They weren't all that attractive, but wearing them made a huge difference.
As the line got more crowded and we found ourselves being shoved against the wall of the venue, we heard the strains of the band running through "Cat's in the Well," and I happened to notice that, looking through a window on the outside of the theatre, the stage was clearly visible through an open door inside. Bob was standing on stage, soundchecking with the band, wearing the costume he'd worn at the Sundance Film Festival a gray sweater and scarf with a matching wool cap over a blond wig. This was probably his attempt to look like an indie filmmaker when he'd appeared at Sundance to promote Masked and Anonymous; most fans had been shocked to see him looking so strange, this being the first disguise he'd worn since the fake beard, but he'd apparently liked it enough to start using it as regular day-to-day clothing. Seeing him in such a disguise was truly a rare coup, even though they didn't play anything out of the ordinary at the soundcheck.
The conversation in the line really picked up after things got crowded, and everyone started talking about past shows we'd seen. I spoke to one guy for a while about the Dalton show from 2001 before realizing that we knew each other from the pool. He was Michael G. Smith, a regular poster on the boards whose reviews were well liked. He was getting pretty close to having seen fifty shows. We spoke for a while about Newport, and of the occasional claims which had come up ever since that the Worcester show had been the superior show of the tour nonsense, we agreed. Probably just people refusing to believe that the show with all the hype could possibly be as good as the shows that went unnoticed.
It turned out, to my vain delight, that lots of the people in the line knew who I was once they heard my name. Some talked about my "How Long Has It Been Since Dylan Played...." page, some asked about the long-form reviews I'd posted of Dalton, Newport, and all of the other shows, and one or two people even asked about the recordings I'd made for the internet tribute albumRMD Does Dylan. By the time the doors opened, I was riding high and feeling like a star of sorts. Even seeing the Asshole in the Tie-Dyed Socks wandering around like he was cock of the walk, or seeing the Bitch in the Cowboy Hat, could bring me down. Tristan even called his girlfriend on his cell-phone, expressing his surpsise to find that I was "sort of a celebrity." In the internet age, we can all be famous for fifteen people.
As the sky grew darker, a voice cut through the crowd.
"All right!" came the barking. "Everyone behave, and we'll get you inside!"
It was Crabby Carl! He must've worked at more than one venue; I wondered if maybe he was a freelance security guard, sending out fliers, or videos of him beating people up for stepping out of line to offer his services to venues that needed to deal with unruly Dylan fans. I never thought I'd be thrilled to see a wannabe gym teacher before; I'd certainly never been thrilled to see a real gym teacher. But the line wouldn't have been the same without good ol' Crabby Carl.
Tristan and I made our way up to the balcony, grabbing a good spot in the second row (the front row was reserved for VIPs and other rich jerks), ordered some wine, and chatted casually with the people around us. The view wasn't as good as the front row, and we wouldn't be able to see the expressions on Dylan's face as well, but we were plenty close; you can only be so far away in a 2000 seat theatre, and, as I looked down at the masses on the floor, including some of my favorite jerks, I didn't envy them in the slightest.
As for the show itself? It was one of the two or three best times I've ever had at a Dylan show. From the opening "Tombstone Blues," which was the best version I'd ever heard, the show was a winner. There was a new, rocking, version of "Moonlight," an old-timey Gershwin-esque murder ballad from Love and Theft. There was a wicked "Floater" with Freddy playing violin, and what I initially thought was the Elizabethan "Girl From the North Country," but which turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous rendition of "Boots of Spanish Leather," which I'd never seen in concert before.
The real highlight, however, was "Cold Irons Bound," in the great rocked-up arrangement. The crowd went nuts after the line "the winds in Chicago have torn me to shreds," since, after all, the winds and snow in Chicago actually had just done exactly that to all of us. When the song ended, the rich woman in front of me turned around to give me a high five, causing me to upgrade her status from "rich jerk" to "cool VIP." I have the powers to do these things.
Tristan and I were both riding high as we walked out of the venue, shaking hands with the regulars, promising to keep in touch with new friends, and trying to chase down the bus in a last-minute attempt to get an autograph. We walked (walked! something you can never do in Atlanta) to Matt's apartment, where we'd arranged to crash in effort to avoid another trip clear down to the south side.
I wouldn't be able to move to Chicago for at least another six months, but it already felt like home.
And, within a week, three shows at the Tabernacle, a 3000 seat venue in Atlanta, had been announced.
*
The Tabernacle shows were looked upon with great interest by Dylan fans who followed setlists; the shows would be the end of the tour, and the last time he'd ended a tour with three shows in the same city had been the legendary London 2003 shows, at which he'd pulled out one surprise after another, playing the ever-so-rare "Dear Landlord," "Jokerman," and "Tough Mama," plus the second-ever performance of "Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread" and the first "Romance in Durango" since 1976. No one really expected a repeat-performance in Atlanta, but, still. We also had never really expected a fake beard at Newport.
After a bit of waffling about whether I could afford to go to all three, what with having to save up to move to Chicago and all, I ended up getting tickets to all three. I wasn't kidding anybody; I wasn't about to miss a Dylan show in Atlanta, especially at the end of a tour.
Then, of course, since I was just about to move, I met a girl.
Her name was Amanda, and she came along with my guitarist to see our last full-band performance in Milledgeville, two days before Dylan's first night at the Tabernacle. We told the bar at which we were playing that she was our "manager" in order to get her some free food, and she and I hit it off right away. I spent most of the show looking to see if she was checking me out, and she spent most of the show, it turned out, trying to look as though she wasn't. By the end of the night, she'd offered to go with me to the first Dylan show at the Tabernacle, and was even willing to do the all-afternoon line-waiting. I took this to be a pretty clear sign that she liked me.
We met up at the nearest train station (since this was Atlanta, it was a 45 minute drive from my parents' house) and rode to the Tabernacle, where, to Amanda's slight surprise, several people were already waiting in line. Sam and John, of course, were among them. Sam was talking at his usual speed with everyone around him. We took what may have been the best spot for line-waiting: right around the corner of the venue, near one of the front doors, but with easy access to the back parking lot, where the buses would be coming in.
Mike showed up a few minutes later, having managed to bolt early from his job as a social worker. He was doing really well at work; his supervisor had told him that he was the best thing that ever happened the program. Attendance at the "Parenting Skills" class that his company taught had just about doubled after he suggested changing the name to "Developing Additional Skills for Demanding Children." It was rough work; on any given day, he didn't know if he'd be going off fishing with a troubled kid or in a trailer park, calling the police while some wacko parents tried to beat the kids he was counseling senseless. The job didn't pay well, but it certainly sounded rewarding.
A couple of hours after Mike arrived, Bob's bus arrived, and Mike and I ran back to the loading area, along with several other people, hoping to see Bob come out of the bus. I was there a minute or two before realizing that Amanda was still sitting on the sidewalk. Some date I was turning out to be.
"You know," I said, "I feel a bit guilty leaving Amanda there like that."
"I don't!" Mike replied, cheerfully. "She'll have to get used to Dylan Dates.'"
But my guilt won out, and I ended up persuading her to come join us. After we'd stood there for a few minutes, Bob emerged from his bus, wearing a white shirt, and the now-ubiquitous wool-cap-with-the-blond-wig disguise.
Several people started shouting and holding out objects they hoped to get signed. The guy next to me started shouting "Troubadour! Troubadour!"
Dylan didn't even turn his head; he made a beeline straight for the venue, and was gone. This was about what we expected; would you turn around if someone was shouting "Troubadour" at you? I wouldn't. The whole sighting lasted less than five seconds, and we all returned to our place in line.
"Totally worth it," I said to Mike. We slapped hands.
"That was....cool," said Amanda. It suddenly dawned on me that I might be looking like a real freak. Mike and I commenced to telling her stories about various people we'd met at shows, people who were far freakier than I, which, I hoped, would make me look normal by comparison.
A short while later, from our place in the line, we began to hear strains of the soundcheck coming through; the band was running through "Trying to Get to Heaven." Then, a few minutes later, there came the chord structure that those of us who collected bootlegs had come to know well the band was running through "Jokerman," which hadn't been played since its surprise appearance in London. Then came "Tough Mama," another rarity that had been played in London.
Just to hear these in the soundcheck was enough to get us jumping around and hugging complete strangers, but it didn't mean they were going to be played that night. In fact, it meant that they probably weren't. It had been over two years since Mike and I had heard "Emotionally Yours," and that was a very common story. "Stairway to Heaven" was soundchecked in 1991, and someone had recently reported hearing a Metallica song. Also, Bob hadn't been present; there were no vocals on any of the soundchecked songs. Bob's appearance in the soundcheck at the Vic had been something of an anamoly.
Inside the venue, I bought Amanda and I some wine, and things returned to normal for a few minutes, before people around us starting shaking hands and exchanging names. Once again, once people heard my name, many people around us knew who I was, and started telling me how much they liked my reviews of Dylan concerts. Some even asked about my own album, which was then on its way back from the pressing plant. It seemed I was famous for fifteen people more than I had initially thought.
"Okay," Amanda whispered to me, at length, "I'm impressed."
On one level, being received as a well-known, well-liked fellow by people I'd never exactly met when I was with someone new was quite an ego boost, but, on the other hand, it was sort of embarrassing, like I was showing off or something. But she said she was impressed, and that was good enough for me.
The show was a good one, though not necessarily one of Dylan's triumphs. The band seemed a bit loose, and the whole thing suffered from a lack of pacing; most of the songs were mid-tempo shuffles. The show had changed a lot in the month since the Chicago shows; in the Atlanta shows, there were no quiet moments; even the slower songs seemed to rock.
However, there were some clear highlights. Dylan's voice wasn't in great shape, this being the end of the tour, but he was apparently learning how to use his "wolf-man" voice to enhance certain songs. "Unbelievable" got a rave-up arrangement for its second appearance at a Dylan show since 1995, and the slow, haunting arrangement of the already-spooky "Man in the Long Black Coat" was one of the greatest things I'd ever seen. Freddy was a show-stealer once again, playing solos on "Summer Days" that were simply out of this world. As expected, none of the rare songs from London that had been played in the soundcheck made an appearance.
Outside the show, Amanda and I met up with a few other friends of mine who gave us a ride to the train station. The show wasn't the sort of thing that would turn someone who didn't own any Dylan albums into a regular Bobcat, but Amanda said that she enjoyed it.
So, dorky thought I may have been, it was a good enough first date that, less than a week later, there was a second one. And then a third. And then a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth.... (Note: we went out for about a year. The first date wth the next girl I dated was a Dylan show, too. I did the honorable thing and waited until the third date to bring the girl I ended up marrying to a Dylan show).
*
I was on my own at the second and third Atlanta shows; Amanda had to work.
The weather outside of the venue was getting colder; John was nice enough to give me a sweatshirt, which he insisted I keep as a going-away present. Still, with the cold weather, there wasn't much of a party atmosphere going on outside. The most interesting things got was when we all huddled near the doors, trying to figure what song the band was soundchecking. We ended up deciding must have been "Wiggle Wiggle," a song that hadn't been played in years, to the great relief of the many fans who consider it to be Dylan's absolute worst songs.
Inside, I managed to get a spot on the rail, directly in front of Bob's keyboard, probably the best spot I'd ever had at a Dylan show, next to a delightful woman named Mary who had been seeing Dylan since 1965.
"I just bought a big, old house," she said. "It's very haunted. People always ask if I'm afraid of the ghosts, but I just can't believe it. I just want to run with them, play with them....it's so weird to think of this whole other world that's all around us all the time."
Normally, I'm not one to believe in ghosts in the first place, thought I'll certainly chicken out when it comes to spending a night in the old, deserted house on the outskirts of town where Old Man Parker was supposedly murdered; even if there were no ghosts, the house abandoned place certainly wouldn't have had cable. However, there was something about Mary's demeanor that kept me from thinking she was some sort of occultist flake; she was delightfully friendly, and didn't seem at all unreasonable or New-Agey.
I spoke a little bit about needing to find a real job in Chicago, and John, who was standing nearby, interjected. "Adam," he said, "knowing you, I don't think you'll need a real job for long."
"Oh no," said Mary, "I can see this brilliant light all around you!"
Now, I'm even less inclined to believe in auras than in ghosts, but if someone tells me I have a really brilliant one, I'm willing to believe that that person can see them. Unless having a brilliant one means that you're destined to work at Starbucks forever, in which case I declare them to be bunk.
The show opened with "Cold Irons Bound," which was a very rare way for Dylan to open the show. And it was evident from the first note that Bob was ON that night. And not just ON, but TOTALLY-ON-F--ING-FIRE. He was singing with all he had, shouting when necessary, and not missing a single cue.
"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" followed, and was much tighter, much better delivered than the current 2004 arrangement usually allowed for. Next was a howlin' mean "Lonesome Day Blues," with a couple of lines spit out, and a few sung so nicely that they could've been described as operatic. I'm not making this up Dylan sounded, briefly, like an opera singer. Next came a nice, rocked-up version of "Under the Red Sky," which I hadn't seen since my first show, nearly nine years earlier. Then a version of "Things Have Changed" that sounded better than it had in years, and a better-than-average "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum." At this point, we were six songs into the set, and there had only been one song from before 1990. I'm not sure that had ever happened at a Dylan show before! In the end, 11 out of the 17 songs had been from after 1990, a huge ratio compared to other Dylan sets, which generally relied much more heavily on sixties material.
The real highlight of the night, oddly enough, was "Masters Of War," a song which had been played to death over the years. However, it hadn't come up too often in the last couple of tours. Its appearance that night may just have been politically motivated; as Dylan sang the song, George W. Bush was on television giving a speech trying to convince the country that, despite the setbacks, the lack of any weapons of mass destruction, and an apparent lack of planning for post-Saddam Iraq, the war in Iraq had been a good idea. Whether Dylan planned this or not was debatable, but one thing was certain: Dylan sang it like a man possessed, prompting applause at the end of each verse. Particularly exciting was the way he sang the word "brain," drawing it out and growling, calling to mind the ghost Mae West (she's back...and she's pissed!) On recordings of the show, you can hear the crowd cheering the delivery of that one word. Listening to it now, there's a certain mocking tone in the word "brain," like a mean kid on the schoolyard picking fun at someone who didn't have a brain to begin with. Rarely can a song I've heard so many times whip me into such a frenzy.
"Floater," with Freddie on violin, sounded as good as it had at The Vic, only more threatening. The song is essentially a monologue, a drifter talking to someone, perhaps someone giving him a ride, and talking to himself at the same time. Sometimes it sounded conversational; tonight it sounded conversational at times, and then would suddenly become intimidating. When he sang "my grandmother can sew new dresses out of old cloth," the message behind it was clear: "if my grandmother can do that, think what I can do, asshole!"
The other highlight of the night was just as surprising as "Masters of War;" a dynamite version of "Honest With Me." Having seen it at every show for well over two years, it was getting to be a bit tired, but on that particular night, Dylan found a new way to sing it, breaking the verses up into shorter lines than before, changing the rhythm, and breathing a whole new life into the song. And, as usual, Freddy kicked butt on the song.
About midway through, I figured out the best way to describe what kind of guy Freddy Koella is. He's the funny fellow who shows up wearing a fancy suit to the auditions for your garage band, grinning and saying "Audition, please," in an accent you can't quite place. Then he stands in the corner picking his nose for five minutes until you ask him to play something, at which point he pulls a pink guitar out of a suitcase and, with a poker face that could make a million in Vegas, proceeds to play the loudest, meanest guitar solo you've ever heard. Then he packs up and leaves without a word of good-bye, never even giving you his name or any contact information. Then, three weeks later, you see him wandering around town wearing the sweater that had disappeared from your closet the previous April. That's who Freddy Koella is, and I love him dearly.
At the end of the show, everyone was riding high we'd just seen Dylan play a show at the top of his game. I, in particular, having been right in the front row, directly in front of Dylan, was particularly thrilled. The show may not have had the all-around goodness of the Vic show; like most shows on that leg of the tour, it still suffered a bit from the lack of pacing. But it didn't matter; the show had sent me into a frenzy over and over, and I was buzzed.
I wandered around the grounds for a while, soaking up the good vibes, until coming upon some fellow who I can assume, judging by his accent, was British.
"That was good," he said, "except for that damned Freddy. He has no sense of rhythm, and doesn't belong in the band at all!"
"You wanna step outside and say that?" I asked, getting my fists ready. Then he laughed, and the guy next to him laughed, and I laughed to and moved on. It was a good thing; I was more than willing to fight for Freddie's honor. Or, in lieu of that, saying something truly mean, like "What do you know about jazz guitar? I've heard British jazz. It sucks!"
There was no fight. I went outside and drove to my parents' house for a night's sleep, crashing there instead of going back. I wanted to have a good spot in line for the last show of the tour.
*
April 14th was probably the coldest day of the year in Atlanta; so cold that I spent a good portion of the morning huddled in a little corner outside of The Tabernacle, while snow flurries fell around me. This was the most snow I'd seen in Georgia in over two years.
I arrived in the early morning that day; I had initially planned to wait until afternoon, but when I woke up and found myself with nothing to do, I figured that time spent flipping channels was time that could be just as well spent hanging out in the Dylan line. All of the regulars had already arrived, along with Michael G. Smith, who had flown down from Chicago to see the last show of the tour.
Conversation that morning tended to focus around two recent Dylan news topics: the first was Dylan's duet with the White Stripes' Jack White. In Detroit a few weeks earlier, Dylan had brought White onstage for the final encore. Now, normally when Dylan does a duet with someone, which comes up about once a year or so, the song is almost always "I Shall Be Released," or, failing that, "Knockin' On Heaven's Door." On this particular night, however, Dylan and White had traded verses on "Ball and Biscuit," a White Stripes song that sounds like something John Lee Hooker might have done.
Michael G.Smith had missed the show, despite being just a state away, and was pretty upset with himself. "How often is Bob gonna cover a song from the 21st century?" he asked. "I'll bet it never happens again."
Michael tried to go to at least one show of every U.S. tour; as of the Atlanta shows, he had been to about fifty altogether, going back to 1989, when, like me, he had been thrilled to see Dylan play a couple of obscure songs off of the few records that he owned.
He cited Red Bluff 2002 as his favorite that particular show was particularly well-known among fans. It was less than a week after Dylan began his switch to the piano, and his singing had improved dramatically. That particular showed featured what many considered the best version of "You're a Big Girl Now" in years, including some re-written lyrics, one of which sounded suspiciously like he had changed "you're a big girl all the way" to "you're a big girl holy shit!" As the bootlegs (the best of which, the one put out by the label Crystal Cat, uses Michael's review as liner notes) prove, it was a magnificent show. Best of all to Michael was the bizarre venue it was held in a livestock arena, complete with dirt floor and barn-like roof. Such an odd place for a beautiful show.
Like so many others to whom I'd spoken, his favorite moment at a Dylan show was a live version of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall." Specifically, the performance at the 2003 Jazz Fest in New Orleans, which had been the shocking debut, midway through the song, apparently quite spontaneously, of the new, syncopated rhythm that I'd seen in Joliet the previous year. As the song ended, he grabbed the friend who had come with him and said "this is why we come!"
It was very rare, at this point, that he saw a song in concert that he hadn't already seen, but the hope of it was part of what kept him coming back. He still hadn't seen a few of the songs that came up from time to time; he sited "Born in Time" and "This Wheel's On Fire" in particular. "This Wheel's On Fire," unfortunately for him, had come up the night before.
The other topic of conversation was Dylan's recent appearance in a TV commercial. He'd sold the rights to his songs for commercials before, which was controversial enough. After all, this was the guy who wrote
Advertising signs that con
you into thinking that you're the one
that can do what's never been done
that can win what's never been won
meantime, life outside goes on
all around you
Back in the early days of his career, given the opportunity to do commercials, Dylan probably would have done something to mock them. Now, it appeared, he was giving in. One remembered the interview in which he recalled MTV telling him how they wanted him to play songs that were "commercial" enough on the Unplugged program; Dylan stated "at one time I would have argued, but there's no point."
This time, he'd gone one step further appeared personally in the commercial. But not just any commercial it was a commercial for Victoria's Secret lingerie. In it, Dylan stood around, wearing a cowboy hat and sporting a Fu Manchu-esque goatee, and his song, "Love Sick" played while a lingerie-clad model wearing fuzzy angel wings strutted around.
Most fans were fairly disturbed by this, cries of "Sell out" (which, of course, have followed Dylan throughout his career) came loud and clear. Peter Stone Brown thought it sucked. When I first heard about it, I thought it sucked, too. But then I began to think....remember how it's been said that, back in the early days, he would have done something sarcarstic? Well, who was to say that that wasn't exactly what he was doing with the Victoria's Secret ad? After all, the idea of Bob Dylan especially at the age of 62 being used to sell sexy women's underwear was, quite simply, absurd.
This theory began to pick up a lot of momentum when someone posted a clip from a 1965 press conference where Bob was asked whether he'd ever sell out to commercial interests, and, if so, which one. Without a moment's pause, Dylan replied with a wry smile that he'd sell out to "ladies' garments." Forty years later, it appeared, Victoria's Secret had taken him up on the offer.
These, however, were not all-day lineup conversations, just scattered short ones made in small groups that gathered at various points around the perimeter of the venue. The day was too cold colder than Chicago had been lately, according to Michael for standing around. Those of us not armed with blankets had to keep moving around to stay warm.
I walked around the venue a few times, then settled into the loading-area to wait for the band to show up. There would be no catching Dylan on the way in; after the first night, he'd arranged for the bus to park in such a way that we couldn't see him.
In the loading area, I met a woman named Marion who had travelled from Germany to see the show, which would be her 150th Dylan concert. We speculated about setlists hopes (she hoped for "Mississippi" or "Highlands," neither of which were at all likely) and amused ourselves by doing impressions of the Charlie Chaplin walk around the parking lot.
The band came in a bit later than usual, and I tried to get them to tell me if that had actually been "Wiggle Wiggle" at the soundcheck the day before, but no one was talking. Marion shouted "Larry! Look!" and held up a sign that said "My 250th Show."
"Wow," said Larry.
"I want a good one!" said Marion.
The soundcheck that particular night was the strangest I'd ever heard; neither Michael nor I could identify any of the songs (except for a run-through of "Mississippi," which was as close as Marion would get to hearing the song); most of them just sounded like bizarre guitar riffs, weird enough to make us wonder if Jack White was in town. It turned out later that Holly Williams, Hank Williams' granddaughter (who had been seen hanging around the loading area) was sitting in with the band for the soundcheck; she and Dylan recorded a duet in Atlanta the next day. None of us knew this at the time, though; all we could do was speculate. Even now, why the addition of her made for such a strange, strange soundcheck is a total mystery to me.
Inside, the venue was mercifully warm, and we were packed in tight enough to get a good deal of body heat going. My friend Brian Mesler, a great guitarist in his own right, came to join me, having bought a ticket on a last minute whim. He had been to the Atlanta 2002 show a couple of years earlier and had been blown away, but was less impressed by the first show of the Tabernacle run, which he'd attended with his wife. Both were better than his first show, though, which was in 1978. He remembers being horribly upset that Dylan was changing the arrangements of the songs so much. Now, however, he had seen the light. He'd arranged for me to call him on my cell during the show the night before, so he could hear "Cold Irons Bound,' and, on a whim, had bought a ticket to the third night.
On my left was a slightly spastic kid of about fourteen. He had, I gather, just recently begun expanding his musical horizons, and had bought a Dylan album or two. Dylan's recent endorsement of Jack White, of whom he spoke in an awed tone, impressed him even further. I liked him right away; he reminded me of the way I was when I first got into Dylan.
"He's such a genius," he said. "Does he ever play Like a Rolling Stone' anymore?"
"Yeah," I said. "You'll hear it tonight. You know he just plays piano now?"
"Yeah, because he has arthritis, right?"
"Well, maybe, we don't really know why he stopped playing guitar."
I looked up at the acoustic guitar that sat next to Dylan's keyboard. It had been set up at every show, but Dylan never actually touched it.
"It doesn't matter," said the kid. "He's a genius!"
The show itself may not have been as great as the night before every show I see that features "Watching the River Flow" is bound to be just a moderate show but the highlights that it had come in spades.
After opening with a better-than-average "Wicked Messenger," Dylan launched into "She Belongs to Me," which had come up only once or twice on the tour after disappearing for awhile following its dynamite one-off at Music Midtown the year earlier. It wasn't as smoldering as the Music Midtown version, but it was a tight, lovely arrangement, with Larry adding great pedal guitar to Dylan's piano. Like the previous version I'd heard, this was the song where Dylan's work on the keyboard, which was normally turned way down in the mix, really stood out.
The set continued with a smoking "Down Along the Cove," and was kicked up another notch later on with a swampy, spooky version of "High Water" that would have done any southern rock band proud, and then got darker by moving on to an even spookier "Ballad of Hollis Brown." As I said, Dylan had learned to use his new, growling voice to great effect on spooky songs. A great compilation could be made of the "spooky songs" from the Atlanta run in particular; some bootleg label could put it out under the title The Bob Dylan Halloween Special or, better yet, It's the Great Pumpkin, Bob Dylan, and I'd happily write the liner notes.
The Great Moment of the Evening, however, came during "Tears of Rage," when Dylan, for the second time ever, added a new verse to the end:
I've never been to Strawberry Fields
I've never been to Penny Lane
but I've been down in the Willow Garden
and I've ridden on the Hellbound Train
and I wanted you to know
just before you did go
where to find me
in case you needed to
it was early dawn
you were long before
before anybody knew
Wow. Not only was it a new verse (well, new to those of us who hadn't had a chance to read the reviews of the only other show where it had been played, in Boone, NC a few nights earlier), but it was a really bizarre new verse, one that fit in pretty well with the rest of the song, as though he had written it back in 1967 but never gotten around to playing it. However, based on the Beatles references, one got a pretty clear impression that it was probably something to do with George Harrison, with whom Bob had been very good friends (though both of the Beatles songs mentioned were Lennon/McCartney numbers).
The oddest part is that it works. "Tears of Rage," like most songs from the "Basement Tapes" (songs written and recorded informally with The Band in 1966-67, which Dylan didn't originally intend to release commercially) sounds about like an ancient folk ballad, except for a reference to Independance Day. The Beatles references certainly weren't ancient, and should have stood out like an Elvis record in the heavy metal section of the record store, but they didn't. In the context of the song, "Strawberry Fields" and "Penny Lane" sounded just as ancient as the "Willow Garden" and the "Hellbound Train." Those two are, indeed, ancient; "Down In the Willow Garden" is a ballad about sex and murder (those two topics with which occupied just as much space in traditional ballads as they do in contemporary rap songs), set apart from other songs in the genre only by being more gruesome than average. The girl in the song is quite unlike the murder ballad victims who are quickly stabbed and buried; in fact, she's a regular Rasputin. In the course of just a few verses, she's first poisoned with wine, then stabbed, and then thrown in the river. "Hell Bound Train" is probably a reference to a blues song of the same name, dating to at least the late 1920's, and, as you can guess by the title, is not exactly the same sort of song as "The Good Ship Lollipop."
So why the Beatles references? Were they just supposed to show a juxtaposition between the happy places where he hasn't been and the depraved places where he had? The contrast or similarities between old ballads and late 20th century rock songs? Just a nod to George Harrison? Naturally, we'll never know. But whatever they mean, they're fascinating, and they make a remarkable extension to what was already a great song.
This was why we came. To watch Bob Dylan present his works of art, and even expand upon them. To witness creation, to see for ourselves the latest facet in one of the modern era's most important bodies of work come into being and to be entertained with a great rock show all the while.
The concert didn't end there; the encores, as usual, began with a particularly smoking version of "Cat's in the Well," which segued into "Like a Rolling Stone."
My personal highlight that night may have been seeing the kid next to me shouting "yes!" at the beginning of "Like a Rolling Stone." For those of us who had seen Dylan time and again, we'd seen more than our share of "Like a Rolling Stone," good versions and bad, so much so that, to many of us, it was nothing to get excited about. Quite the opposite, many time we even thought of it as something to sit through patiently. Clearly, by moving past the enthusiasm of the kid seeing it live for the first time, we were losing something.
And it was our loss; the Spring tour arrangement of the song, slightly reworked from the arrangement that had been a standard of the sets for years, was terrific, with Freddy's mid-song solos, which captured a bit of the original feel of the song, being a highlight every night. The theatrical element that I'd noticed in the song in years past wasn't as clearly pleasant, but the energy level of the song was higher than it had been in years.
Following the song, Dylan introduced the band, even stopping to tell a joke when he introduced Freddy. "Freddy was writing a letter to his wife last night on an empty stomach," he said. "I told him Freddy, you'd better use paper!'"
Ew.
The band then settled in for the final song of the tour, which, predictably, was "All Along the Watchtower," featuring what may have been Freddy's weirdest solo yet; it sounded not so much like a guitar, but like the machines in science fiction movies that cure all disease from spacemen in a few seconds.
Brian Mesler was much more thrilled with the show than he had been with the first night by a long shot, and the kid next to me was practically out of his head. He'd been a bit spastic before the show, now he was like a pack of raw nerves with excitement and neither Brian nor the kid had known about the new verse in "Tears of Rage."
Michael G. Smith, however, had noticed it, and said that his jaw dropped to the floor when he heard it. The most excited reaction, however, came from Sam.
Turning back from his spot on the rail at the end of the show, Sam looked as though he needed oxygen. "'Tears of Rage!'" he shouted, with what was left of his now-hoarse voice, "with the new verse about the Beatles! Awesome! Awesome!" His voice sounded as rough as Dylan's, and he looked as though he might have fallen over at any second if the people around him hadn't been there to hold him. I'd seen Sam at the end of many shows before, but never looking like such a wreck as this.
Clearly, a splendid time was had by all.
*
And that was the end of the tour. It was also, it turned out, the end of Freddy Koella; the last, weird solo turned out to be his very last solo with the band. When the next tour started, about six weeks later, he had been replaced by Stu Kimball, who wasn't quite as wacky, but played a mean guitar that fit in a little more tightly with the rest of the band than Freddy had.
As of this writing, I've now seen twenty-three shows, and hope to see many more in the future. I'm skipping out on the summer tour with Willie Nelson currently in progress, since it isn't coming anywhere near me, but there are rumors of a tour of the midwest in October, and my hopes are high.
I'm now less than a month than the ninth anniversary of my first Dylan concert; I've seen a total of twenty-three.
I've met an almost untold number of interesting people.
I tried to make a list of all of the things I've learned about because of Dylan. And all of the things that I've learned about and done as a result of that. I was going to make it into the epilogue, but I decided that that wouldn't make for particularly interesting reading.
Suffice it to say that I was there. I don't regret a minute of my time waiting in lines, showing up early, or riding on the Greyhound. I don't regret a single hard-earned buck of the hundreds I've spent, even now, at a time when I'm out of college, into the workforce, and, appropriately enough, flat-on-my-ass broke without a job.
But if the rumors are true, and Dylan is back in town next week I'll be there.
And the Visa Company will break out the good cookies.