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CounterPunch
October
8, 2002
Dylan in Eugene
High Water,
Hard Rain, Hogs All in the Mud
by
DAVID VEST
"I know
a place where there's still something going on," sings Bob Dylan on Love and Theft. The current
tour proves him right. The place is wherever he and his crack
band happen to be standing. What's going on is the serious business
of rock and roll, as conducted by an artist and a band at their
peak.
On a Saturday night in early October,
Dylan and company were standing in MacArthur Court, the ramshackle
old basketball gym at the University of Oregon in Eugene. The
near-capacity crowd was about equally divided between students
and older fans. I sat next to a Vietnam vet who had last seen
Dylan at the Concert for Bangla-Desh.
Dylan has opened most of his shows on
recent tours with an acoutic number, a folk song like "Roving
Gambler" or Duncan and Brady," or a bluegrass gospel
standard like "Somebody Touched Me" or "I Am the
Man, Thomas."
The current tour had opened in Seattle
with "Solid Rock," as "hard" a song as Dylan
has ever recorded. In Eugene he strolled onstage in a 50s-looking
white jacket, stood at an electronic piano, charged  immediately
into "Maggie's Farm," and kept going from there until
it seemed the ancient wooden hall would literally explode during
an astounding finale of "Summer Days," with Dylan,
Charlie Sexton and Larry Campbell all soloing in ensemble on
electric guitars, huddled close together with bassist Tony Garnier
and drummer George Receli as though trying just to survive the
apocalyptic fury of it all.
It was that kind of night. This looks
like it is going to be that kind of tour.
On "Just Like a Woman" and
"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," Dylan played piano
with one hand and harmonica with the other. "Tombstone Blues"
and "It's All Right Ma, I'm only Bleeding" appeared
in radical new arangements, as though co-written not by Dylan
but by Howling Wolf and Earl King.
There were three Warren Zevon covers,
including "Mutineer," one of the most deeply emotional
moments I've ever experienced at a Dylan concert. Dylan sang
with his full range (of voice as well as feeling), demonstrating
that the shredded croak of "Time Out of Mind" is no
closer to his "real" voice than was the milky croon
of "Nashville Skyline." (I have heard a demo of "Everything
Is Broken" on which he sounds like the Dylan of 1966.)
When Dylan finally stepped away from
the piano and strapped on an electric guitar, it was to give
us a "Brown Sugar" that rocked, if anything, harder
than the Stones. His playing on both electric and acoustic was
wonderful, with none of the "clunkers" of previous
shows.
It feels strange to write of an artist
who emerged in the Sixties that the strongest moments (in both
performance and crowd response) of his current show are provided
by songs released in the year 2001, but that is the simple fact
of the matter. With, say, Paul McCartney, people get up and go
to the bathroom when he plays new material. At Dylan's Eugene
show, which included both "Watching the River Flow"
and a chillingly beautiful "Senor," the real highlights
were "Honest With Me," "Lonesome Day Blues,"
"Moonlight" (yes, he hit all the notes) and "Summer
Days."
You wonder, almost, if the day will come
when people complain about Dylan playing so many of his old songs.
People all around me were hoping he would play "Things Have
Changed."
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch. He is a poet
and piano-player for the Pacific Northwest's hottest blues band,
The Cannonballs.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com
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2002
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