Bob Dylan and the latest incarnation
of his Never Ending Tour ensemble rolled and tumbled into Mohegan Sun on
Wednesday. The show came on the heels of two gigs at the Borgata in Atlantic City. But the
irony of the greatest counter-cultural icon of all time playing an
ultra-corporate casino seemed to be lost on the primarily baby-boomer crowd;
they came to watch the “voice of their generation” recreate some of his most
influential works and seemed to pay little mind to the venue through which he
chose to do it.
Just as his audience did on
Wednesday night, the Bob Dylan of late has also virtually blocked out his
surroundings. His latest album, 2006’s Modern
Times, neglects all contemporary musical trends and sounds like it could
have been recorded by Chuck Berry in 1955 (which seems to contradict the
album’s title). That classic sense of American rock ‘n’ roll characterized
Wednesday’s show, lending the evening an inimitable sense of nostalgic
ambiance, as only Dylan can muster.
In a departure from recent tour
protocol, Dylan strapped on his guitar for the first five songs of the set.
This part of the show featured a host of crowd pleasing, 1960s classics. Dylan
moved the audience with his emotional tour-de-force, “Don’t Think Twice, it’s
Alright” and took them from Juarez to New York City without ever stepping foot
outside of Connecticut with the Highway
61 Revisited epic “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues.” With a reworked,
passionate version of “It’s Alright Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding),” Dylan proved his
brilliant lyrical timelessness as well as his enduring social relevance; in a
perpetually war-torn world, the song remains as pertinent as ever. Its
quintessential line “Even the president of the United States sometimes has to
stand naked” still received an uproarious response from the audience. It has
never resonated as strongly as it does in 2007.
After running through his early ‘60s
rarity “To Ramona,” Dylan moved to his now-famous keyboards, which have been
his instrument of choice since 2002. Dylan pounded the keys through his take on
Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ and Tumblin,” and crooned his way through the
jazz-infused “Moonlight.” During Blonde
on Blonde’s “Just Like a Woman,” Dylan sang the chorus a syncopated
half-beat behind, throwing the audience off, but keeping the 41-year-old
classic fresh. On “Ballad of a Thin Man,” however, he barely deviated from the
recorded version at all, which is unusual for someone whose most famous songs
are often unrecognizable for several bars (or, sometimes, until he starts
singing). After blazing through his psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness
masterpiece “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” Dylan treated
the audience to the historically tinged epic “Highway 61 Revisited.” He then
ran through the quintessential summer-tour tune, “Summer Days” (which was
aching for the virtuosic guitar prowess of Larry Campbell, Dylan’s former
axe-man) before closing the set with an almost unrecognizable version of his
trademark protest classic “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
After a quick encore of Modern
Times’ opening track, “Thunder on the Mountain” and a Hendrixesque “All
Along the Watchtower,” Dylan and his band got back on the bus, already heading
for the next show. In his wake, the
living legend left The Mohegan Sun crowd overwhelmed by excitement at what they
had just seen. During “Spirit on the Water” on Wednesday, the 66-year-old
rocker sang the poignant lines, “You think I'm over the hill/You think I'm past
my prime/Let me see what you got/We can have a whoppin' good time,” as if he
were addressing the audience directly. In a clear case of life imitating art,
Dylan proved himself more right than he probably knows.
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