Photo credit: Raph PH
Bob Dylan
To no one’s surprise, Bob Dylan did not speak to the audience during his performance Saturday, Oct. 26, at the Rave Hall in Milwaukee’s The Rave/Eagles Club. But one defiant fan made his presence felt during Dylan’s final encore number, “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.” That fan walked along the front of the stage with his camera aloft and was presumably filming the performance. He, in effect, flipped the bird to pre-concert announcements, dozens of security personnel, the warning card handed out at admission and flyers posted around the venue saying, “DO NOT RECORD OR YOU WILL BE KICKED OUT.”
Dylan gave up being the voice of a generation long ago, and now he is simply focused on being, in his words, “a song and dance man.” As a songwriter, he is in a league of his own. As a performer, he has continued to the beat of his own drum. Think for a moment and see if you can come up with another 78-year-old performing a two-hour set.
Eight old-time spotlights circled the stage, lighting a trio of mannequins and offering the perception of Saturday night at the county fair. Decked out in a tuxedo, playing guitar, Dylan opened with his lifetime mission statement, “Things Have Changed.” To his right, the ageless, rail-thin guitar slinger Charlie Sexton appeared to have been assembled from a mail-order rock and roll kit, a lock of hair falling to his forehead as if by script. For the span of the 17-song set and a two-song encore, Dylan and his five-piece roadhouse band offered rearrangements of many of his best-known songs. Yet this could hardly be called a run-through of his greatest hits. As the man says, you buy your ticket and you take the ride.
Though the ballroom was constructed long before loud rock and roll were even imagined, the band’s medium volume often allowed listeners to pick up on a song’s first line (“Girl From the North Country” and “Simple Twist of Fate”). Other times, you had to wait for the chorus to access the tune’s reimagined road map. For “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” Dylan sat at his upright piano and asserted the choruses as if he were lightly poking you in the chest with his finger to make a point. “When I Paint My Masterpiece” found him dramatically over-enunciating “Brussels” and “mussels.” With his songs “Lenny Bruce” and “Gotta Serve Somebody,” he acknowledged his trio of gospel albums. “Early Roman Kings” recalled the primal stomp of Muddy Waters blues.
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As a leader, Dylan allowed his players plenty of room to vamp and solo. When not at the piano, he preferred to stroll (shuffling not unlike Charlie Chaplin) into the midst of the band instead of frontstage. Donnie Herron effortlessly moved from violin to steel guitar. And on “Thunder on the Mountain,” drummer Matt Chamberlain played like a kid who just figured out the fills on “Wipeout.” Dylan’s harmonica playing these days resembles the stylized note-choices of Toots Thielemans instead of his traditional flurry of sound. On “Honest With Me,” he pounded and stabbed at the piano like his idol Little Richard.
It is easy to get the impression that Dylan changes for the sake of change. Did he sing different words to his own songs? Hell, if I could tell. It was not until the leaden arrangement of the evening’s final tune that it sounded like he was running out of gas. By then, the audience could leave with a rare experience.
