SmashMouth

Yes, that was Bob Dylan up on stage I was assured. Yes, the words were in there somewhere, I was assured. Turns out, if I’m lucky by the end of the first chorus I can figure it out. No one else I’ve talked to about it seems willing to admit what appeared patently obvious to me: If I knew this was the Bob Dylan I’d be getting, I don’t think I’d want to attend. I mean really knew. I had been warned, but this was beyond even my worst expectations.

We’d intersected with a few other writer types, and marveled at how good Dylan’s band was and the stripe going down his leg to mark him out for the eye from a stadium’s length away. But as the minutes passed and I tried to listen closely, I just didn’t experience the glimmers of recognition and nostalgia that I’d hoped he might stir up. My cohorts who’d experienced many a Dylan concert over the last few decades remarked this is the best they’ve seen him in all that time. I was powerless to argue in the face of such a response, beyond admitting I couldn’t understand a damn thing he was saying. His raspy unintelligible wail would remain unintelligible to me throughout my stay, cut short because I just really couldn’t take it any longer.

As we left the stadium and exited the gates, suddenly Bob’s words appeared with clarity out of nowhere, singing “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” The voice that I’d been straining to hear was suddenly accessible to me outside the stadium, minus the gravelly overtone. Ummm, huh? When the final reports were written recounting the set-list as a veritable greatest hits collection, it just made me that much madder.

Everyone else seems happy to give Bob a free-pass on this one, but not me. This will go down as one of the most disappointing musical experiences I’ve had yet in my nearly thirty *gulp* years. For that Bob, there is no free pass.

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