Beer on the tracks—Bob Dylan at Midway Stadium in St. Paul, MN. 7-10-13

There were plenty of tell-tale signs at last night's Bob Dylan concert in St. Paul. The frozen clock, hands stuck at midnight, on the Midway Stadium scoreboard. The empty wheelchair, abandoned behind a swaying crowd near the stage. The blaring, Gabriel-like horn of the eastbound freight train that passed as Bob fired up his million-and-first rendition of "All Along the Watchtower" at the end of the night.

It would be easy to take such evocative moments and elevate them into something more meaningful. Maybe a bit too easy. The truth, if truth is relevant to a Bob Dylan performance, is a bit more nuanced. This was a good, not great, show from a legend who is well past his prime but still gamely putting himself out there night after night, still on the Never Ending Tour, entertaining young and old alike.

Dylan, for all his acknowledged brilliance and historical import, remains an acquired taste, an oracle to his fans and a mystery to the uninitiated. The same show that had a friend—who likes his music—expressing extreme disappointment about Dylan's Tom-Waits-with-a-headcold voice and the barely-recognizable rewrites of songs like "Tangled Up in Blue," had me in tears as Dylan leaned into his harmonica for long, drawn-out blasts that sounded like they had been torn out of his 72-year-old soul during "She Belongs to Me."

Sentimentalist that I am, I couldn't help thinking this might be the last time I see the man in the flesh (Also what I thought when I saw him in Rochester, what, 9 years ago? Maybe he'll outlive us all.) As with a treasured patriarch, some of us attend to every utterance and change of expression, drinking in the experience of seeing him one more time.

And others shrug and say, "Meh."

Mostly, I think, people had a pretty good time. Grainbelt Tall Boy cans littered the grounds postconcert, the craft beer wagon had an impressive line throughout the night, and the smell of something sweet and herbal was in abundance.

The fact that two of the warmup acts would've fit right in at any Grateful Dead concert certainly contributed to the mellow vibe. My Morning Jacket sounded good, and got a little help from Minnesota semi-legends Trampled By Turtles, who joined them for three songs. The hard-to-peg Jackets ranged from gentle love songs to psychedelic jazz-funk squawking, and frontman Jim James was certainly eye-catching, wearing a purple cape and what appeared to be a clock radio hanging from his neck. (Truth be told, I was pretty far from the stage at that point. So I'm not sure what that was.)

Wilco put on a pretty good set, including one of my faves, "New Madrid," from the Uncle Tupelo catalog. Speaking of Meh--I've liked, not loved, Wilco through their long years as counter-culture darlings. Last night, it occurred to me the band never really has much fire, although there was lots of smoke. It says something, I think, that their most compelling performance of the night was of a song that featured nonsense lyrics, written by Woody Guthrie as a lark ("Hoodoo Voodoo").

But maybe I was just in a bad mood after waiting 40 minutes in line for cheese curds.

In any case, the night's biggest disappointment (even worse than the cheese curds!) was that I missed Richard Thompson, who was a big part of the reason I wanted to get tickets in the first place. Thompson and his trio started promptly at 5:30 and played for 30 minutes. After fighting rush hour traffic to get to the stadium, I stepped out of my car in the parking lot and heard the last note of the last song of RT's set. Oh well.

Much has been made of Dylan's shoutout to Bobby Vee, and it was touching to hear him speak at length (for Dylan, at least) about the artist who, in the words of another friend, was "The first person to hire Dylan, and the first person to fire him." We didn't see Bobby Vee onstage, but he was there, per Dylan, and he had to be smiling with the rest of us, proud that the kid had done good. Seated at his piano, Dylan seemed genuinely pleased to have pulled off the cover of "Susie Baby." That little glimpse of vulnerability was perhaps something new to even the most veteran Dylan fans.

Three-quarters of the way through the set, Dylan wandered over to stage's only prop, a 6-foot-tall flame that burned in a cage-like enclosure through the night, and seemed to warm himself briefly. Just another old man staring into the fire, perhaps, recalling other shows and other days. But what days. And what a flame.

The NRA throws a drowning Republican Party an anvil

This story about the NRA makes a very good point. The NRA is a radical lobbying group that has no interest in compromise, consensus-building, or reform. As the article says, they're there to say NO, and say it as loudly as possible. It's not interested in politics, other than to make sure that no political solutions are found to the problems created by guns.

Oh, that's a good fit for where the GOP is these days.

Look at it this way: the GOP has lost the battle on gay marriage. It's lost the struggle to oppose Obamacare (A/K/A ACA). It's suffered a historic setback over immigration, to the point where many analysts question whether the GOP has much of a future as a national party, after alienating such large groups of voters. And of course it continues to have problems with women voters.

So does it really need another divisive, controversial issue to further drive away moderate voters? Does it need be seen as MORE intolerant and resistant to change?

What the Republican Party needs is, of course, not the point. The NRA doesn't care about the Republican Party any more than it cares about finding political consensus on the problem of gun violence or the lives of the the 30,000 Americans lost to gun violence every year.

Guns are all that matter to the NRA and its most devoted followers. Guns are more important than public health, more important than the welfare of their fellow Americans, more important than the Constitution itself, really, since all they can focus on is their bastardized version of the 2nd Amendment.

I will note here that I know several NRA fans who will strenuously object to this line of argument. They will say I am unfairly judging them. "We're not extremists," they will argue. But when I ask them if there's anything, ANYTHING that they will compromise on when it comes to this debate, they say no. They won't even support universal background checks--they hem and haw and ramble on about their reasons, but when it comes down to it, they will not compromise. At all. On any point.

So what other conclusion can we draw? Their actions and words make it clear: it's guns that they care about. That's it.

And since the GOP and the NRA are now tied together so closely, I suspect both groups will continue to be marginalized. The American public has seen enough of radical, uncompromising approaches to political issues. This country has problems it needs to address. Since the NRA and GOP refuse to be part of the solution... well.

Time will tell if I'm right. But I think most of us have had about enough of the NRA.