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.
