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Bob DylanIan Concert Reviewby Gene Shapiro and Iver KernBehold, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye shall see him ... I saw seven standing lamps of gold, and among the lamps one like a son of man, robed down to his Jeet, with a golden girdle round his breast ...his eyes flamed like fire;... and his voice, was like the sound of rushing waters; ... and out of his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and his Jace shone like the sun in full strength.The Revelation of John 1:7-16The social event of the season happened last February 11 — Bob Dylan and The Band performed at the Oakland Coliseum. The Band was excellent.The scene outside the Coliseum was about as expected — people were perhaps several years older on the average than the standard Winterland crowd, but the Krishna people were there passing out booklets, “as Bob asked. It tells where his music is coming from.” And there were plenty of costumes; one man in a sari and veil asking for pity and a ticket in a poorly disguised accent, for he had “come from so far.”Inside, the stage had instruments, a rocking chair and old couch (what for?), and an old-fashioned Tiffany lamp. Soon, the performers appeared, looking more like hip Wall Street executives than rock-and-roll stars.In fact, efficiency seemed tobe the keynote of the concert: efficiency in getting the crowd in and out and in controlling the performance and crowd reaction with precise lighting techniques and fast-flowingPublic Meetings ScheduledThree public meetings will be held by the University of California, San Francisco, campus to discuss its plans for the School of Dentistry Building Program.The Draft Environmental Impact Report will be considered at a Public Hearing to be scheduled by the University during the week of June 24, 1974. The campus has scheduled the following public meetings:Wednesday, March 6, 1974 - U.C.S.F. Campus, Parnassus Avenue, Medical Sciences Building, Cole Hall Auditorium, Noon.Wednesday, March 6, 1974 - Laguna Honda Ele-musical numbers, the order of which (including the two encores) could be read the week before in the popular news media. The audience went wild, rushed the stage (body guards appeared before the number, knowing what was to come), and lit matches in the dark, all right on schedule.“I just can’t do what I done before,” Dylan sang as he began the set with “Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine)”, which he also sang as his first encore. And indeed, he wasn’t the Bob Dylan of the ’60’s. The songs and the words were the same, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They are a-Changin’,” “Lay Lady Lay,” “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All-Right,” “Highway 61 Revisited,” and others.But the man, the style, the feeling was not the same. His voice was strained, as though he had to push out the last word of each line. And the music no longer had the intimate relevance to the lyrics; the delivery was no longer marked by that ability to send his meaning deep into the personal world of each of his listeners. In fact, most of the lyrics were barely intelligible.Following intermission, Dylan played acoustic guitar and harmonica and sang without accompaniment. The audience loved it, not because he was so good, but because this was closer to the Bob Dylan with whom people identify; they came to see the Dylan of “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Desolation Row,” not “New Morning” or “Planet Waves.”The Band, a group composed of outstanding musicians, was superb throughouttheir set. They played many of their old favorites, such as “Rag Mama Rag,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Up on Cripple Creek,” and “The Weight,” and accompanied Dylan on most of his songs.But the attention centered on Dylan, and the crowd responded with enthusiasm to whatever he did. The climax came with “Like a Rolling Stone.” The signal seemed somehow to spread, perhaps it was the positioning of the body guards, that it was time to rush the stage.The lights turned on the audience as people swayed and even danced with joy — it was Bob Dylan singing! Spotlights spun around the arena, all was wonder and delight. Glowing matches appeared on all sides, an ineffable (for the majority who were unfamiliar with the old Joan Baez peace concerts) tribute to a modern hero. Two encores, the final one a rather hollow version of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and it was over.Driving back across the bridge, and for several days afterwards, I felt a strong sense of bewilderment. What had happened? Who is the Bob Dylan of the past? What had I expected, and what had I found? Why was the concert such a success?Was it simply a tribute to a hero of the past? Or was it a group of people gathered together to celebrate the memories of their youth; an attempt to recapture or remember what it was like to be younger, perhaps less cynical or more alive?Much has been made of Dylan’s new “apolitical” image, the suggestion being that when he lost his focus on thecurrent issues of the day his power and relevance began to fade. The truth is that Dylan’s songs have not been political since before the days of “My Back Pages.”No, it is not a sense of the political, but a sense of outrage, perhaps the only unifying principle in the vastness of his creations, which Bob Dylan seems to have lost — outrage at the masters of the wars and the makers of the bomb shelters, the government, our society, his lovers, time, death, words, psychiatrists, and even himself.Dylan grew out of a different time and place. He is not a product of the love generation, but of the days of beatniks, New York coffee houses, and Woody Guthrie. Dylan was never a part of the utopianism of the hippy movement.He sprang from the very bourgeois, individualistic tradition of the Old Left, from a time when dissenters truly were an elite, persecuted minority. These dissenters sang out in anger and in hope, in that forgotten time before cynicism poisoned the land, and they were taken seriously, at least, as artists and popular poets.But of what relevance is outrage today, when popular polls tell us that 70% of the people disapprove of what is happening in the country, and yet it continues to happen? Outrage is passe, a subject for the comedians on the late night tv talk shows. Our current culture is too cynical to take it seriously.One feels a need for such a figure today, the leader-out-cast, the rebel who tells us where he’s going and why, and lights the path for the vanguard of society who see that this is where they are heading, too. One still feels this need, but the currently prevailing commun-alism is historically not a fertilesoil for the development of great artists or prophets. I don't believe that either Maha-raj ji or Werner Erhard will replace Bob Dylan.Indeed, what could Dylan have done onstage that would have been relevant? What kindof popular art causes more than a minor stir these days — “Deep Throat” or “The Exorcist?” Dylan's direction seems to be moving away from the personal voice of the committed artist and into a world of formal music — country, jazz, and rock, on different albums. And with his retreat to forms his music has become less immediate, his songs less compelling. He writes:Looks like a-nothing but rain ...... Build me a cabin inUtah,Marry me a wife, catch rainbow trout,Have a bunch of kids who call me “Pa,”That must be what it’s all about.So, in a way, it was entirely appropriate that the spotlights were on the audience as it went wild while Dylan sang “Like a Rolling Stone.” True, it was Bob Dylan standing up there on the stage, but it was not really his singing which generated the excitement. No, the energy came from the people in the audience, Bill Graham’s planning and lighting and Rolling Stone's program notwithstanding.The songs or the spectacle seemed to unlock a little of the old-time enthusiasm of innocent participation in people, not because of the performance, nor because of the slick production, but because of each person's memory of Bob Dylan and his songs, andofthetime they represent.NIGHT TEETHING AT ANTIBESKeith Kapleauhard to (maintain equilibriumin the dentist's office. - -he little swirl of descending water—Psycho.;he green metallic medusa proffering a plate of pointed implement rhile my teeth are falling numb.° • 1 * • • . m t i • * ■ -vhe piped musak, the cautery, he coolant water, mouth lamp, irrors on steel fingers all of this sleeping iwaiting the dentist’s return 'hile my teeth fall dumb.iow,here’s a sucking tube under my tongue, light is shining in my eyes musak sings:‘all I have to do is dream dream dream ...” he dentistis some kind of rodent ;uarding his little empires of silver and porcelainwouldn’t it be better, perhaps, o let our teeth rot and save our gums Yom a pale-fingered needling this dentist leeds much more sun perhaps simply ly teeth need a good tan.u/nulHn't it Kp hptfpr nprhunc
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San Francisco Synapse
San Francisco, California, US
Thu, Feb 28, 1974
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