Dylan at the Santa Monica Civic
By Tom Teicholz at 4 September, 2008, 10:49 am
There we were standing for two hours in a room that more like a high school auditorium than a concert hall — no chairs on the floor, general admission, only seats in the bleachers in the back — the floor raked downwards toward the stage, so the better sight line was about a third way back.
I will say that the show was better than the one he put on last summer at the Orange County Fair — it was musically more together and he was just more into a groove.Â
He opened with “Rainy Day Women< It Ain’t me Babe, and Stuck inside of Mobile (with the Memphis Blues again) — making me wonder if those were the songs he played the last time her performed at the Civic 30 years ago, but there was no comment about that. He closed the show with Like A Rolling Stone and All Along the Watchtower .
Dylan spent the evening standing at a small electric piano, swaying to the music, dipping an make movements like he was about to do a Chuck Berry duckwalk — and he directed his band. He played harp or harmonica on several numbers and occasionally after a number he would make a small arc from his piano to in front of the drum kit and back again. No guitar, electric or acoustic. There were no backup singers.Â
Dylan didn’t talk to the audience, no comments other than to introduce the band at the encore. No recognition of the place he was playing, or about the last time he was there, or that he was home, or had friends and family nearby (if he did). Nope.
He was kind of in a jam band kind of mood. Many of the songs allowed for extended musical detours some of which were hot and heavy, like ZZ Top had come aboard. There were as a stripped down version of Ballad of a Thin Man which was one of the evening’s highlights, where Dylan alternated voices (one gruffer than the other) on lyrics. He did a two hour set and looked fit and sharp throughout.
Looking around the room I felt younger and slimmer than I was, by comparison — but there were a lot of teenagers there. One fifteen year old, who was seeing Dylan in concert for the first time told me she thought the show was great and was happy to hear so many songs she knew.
As I’ve written elsewhere, there are not a lot of people out there doing what Dylan does, putting on musically, lyrically, the kind of show he does — not an oldies show, but a living thing (with material that reaches deep into his catalogue). He’s 65 and he’s been performing for 45 years. And last night he played before some 1500 people and tonight he’;ll play in Santa Barbara. Like A Rolling Stone, indeed.
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