Rainy Day Dylan

Stoler, Jesse
Issue date: 9/10/08 ~ ISUBengal
The Independent Student Newspaper of Idaho State Univ.

It was 6:00 p.m. in Park City, Utah on Aug. 31. I was toward the back of a long line of people waiting to see Bob Dylan perform. I, like everyone else in the line, was incredibly excited to see the legend perform, but my excitement was somewhat hampered by the fact that it was raining, not just a little either. I'm talking about the kind of rain that made Noah build an ark.
I happened to be wearing only a t-shirt, and I had no umbrella. It's rare moments like this that make me wish I had been a boy scout, if for no other reason than that I would have had the whole "always be prepared" thing beaten into my conscience. But despite the buckets of rain that were pouring, nothing could have killed my enthusiasm to watch the man who wrote "Like a Rolling Stone."

After I bought another shirt and a poncho in order to fight the miserable rain, Dylan took the stage at 7:30. The first song he played was the "Blonde on Blonde" classic opener,
"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35."
The crowd was dancing and overjoyed, particularly when Dylan would get to the line, "Everybody must get stoned."
For years, many Dylan scholars have argued that the song
is about the stoning of women in Islamic fundamentalist states, but I believe those gentlemen lost that argument quite some time ago, evidenced by the fact that I sensed a certain Pineapple Express smell all around me during the song. I, myself, was caught up in the moment as well, so much so that I didn't realize that the rain had stopped.

In fact, there was no more rain at all for the entire show, much to everyone's delight. It gave everyone a better chance to appreciate Mr. Dylan's electric show. Although his voice is pretty much shot, Dylan gave it his all on songs like "Simple Twist of Fate." In fact if anything, his lower register bark gave the already lovely "Blood on the Tracks" ballad even more sorrow.

Dylan stayed in place for most of the concert, looking away from the audience and toward his guitar player. While this is unusual for a frontman in a band, one must remember that Dylan has never exactly been an Iggy Pop kind of performer. That's okay. At a Dylan show it's about the music and the energy one gets from the crowd of devoted followers makes up from any lack of energy from the artist himself. Dylan has also been able to organize a fantastic group of musicians, a group that brings new flavor to his classic work. The loud, military drums brought thunder to a formerly rain-soaked Park City on songs like "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again." They also helped to turn the classic "Highway 61" closer and "Desolation Row," into an old-fashioned American jam session, with a guitar solo in the middle ripped out of the Jimmy Page playbook. But, Dylan didn't stick to the classics. He performed a few songs from his recent, and extraordinary, album like "Love and Theft" and "Modern Times." Dylan and his band, however, successfully wove the songs into the show, bringing them all back home.

Continued...

The 2006 album "Modern Times" is Dylan's 32nd album. His first album, which was self-titled, came out in 1962. It's been a career of soul-searching and gut-wrenching songs, forgetting the 1980's. As much as he has resisted the title, to many, Bob Dylan is the voice of a generation. Dylan symbolized a rebellion. Dylan was not a clean-cut pop star, as most of the people who preceded him were. Dylan had hair that looked like it had never been washed or combed. He was also androgynous. Look how easily Cate Blanchett was able to sink into the Dylan skin in I'm Not There. He also didn't care what his fans felt. He stood on the stage at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 with an electric guitar and was vilified for it. His fans, who had grown to love his folk songs, treated Dylan as if he were a traitor for going electric. Of course, going electric led to "Highway 61 Revisited," arguably his greatest album.

Which leads me to ask, where is my generation's Bob Dylan?

Sure, there are many popular artists around, some of them even perform somewhat decent music, but no artist today taps into the fears and insecurities of an entire nation, at least not the way Dylan did. With so much media around in our daily lives, audiences have become diversified. The record industry, as a result, targets each niche. The industry has lost patience, as well. In today's bottom line first world, an artist needs to sell on every record, otherwise, that artist is pretty much written off. This means artists can't evolve or expand because it would risk losing their audience. Plus, no one wants the "voice of the generation" label anymore, as the sting of Kurt Cobain still remains. There are brilliant artists out there, Bright Eyes and Sufjan Stevens come to mind. But in today's climate, neither one has the audience or the support they would need to build such a lasting career.

The last song in Dylan's set was "Like a Rolling Stone." The rain, which had been absent since the first song, started to pour again, only this time even harder. Now I don't mean to suggest that Bob Dylan controls the weather, but the thunder brought even more to Dylan's legendary, brutal and bruising song. I was wrong before. It's not just about the music at a Bob Dylan show. There's something about being in the presence of the man. He is a national treasure; the poet laureate of a generation; the first, and most likely last, of his kind. In the end, he gave us all shelter from the storm.

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