Aw, man. Drifter’s Escape, Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power), Girl Of The North Country, Tangled Up In Blue, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, and Blind Willie McTell? That’s a killer setlist, and no mistake. Monday and Tuesday were both grand, but I hope at least some of these cuts — particularly Senor and Willie — show up on Dylan’s Saturday night closer. Update: Shelter from the Storm, Love Sick, Not Dark Yet, and Things Have Changed? Bob, you’re killing me.
Tag: NYC
…Columbia Records’…
Night #2 of Bob’s Beacon Stand:
Tombstone Blues / Love Minus Zero/No Limit / Lonesome Day Blues / This Wheel’s on Fire / Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum / John Brown / Under the Red Sky (Listen here) / Highway 61 Revisited / Bye and Bye / Shooting Star (Listen here) / Honest With Me / Masters of War
Encore: Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right / All Along the Watchtower
So, only two repeats from last night (Highway 61, Watchtower) in a 14-song setlist…that’s not bad at all. Tonight’s choices were more esoteric than Monday’s show, with “This Wheel’s on Fire” and “John Brown” the main standouts in the middle going. “Masters of War” has been given a spooky and even somewhat jarring update — as my friend Jeremy noted, it’s not exactly the type of song you expect to rock out to. And, while I don’t think I was as moved in this show as I was by “Visions of Johanna” or “Desolation Row” the night before (the stifling heat in the upper deck cheap seats didn’t help), any evening in which you hear the freewheelin’ Bob Dylan perform “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” has to go down as a good one.
Unfortunately, we missed Amos Lee this time around. As for Merle & the Strangers, I’d say their setlist was about 50-60% the same, although, Greatest Hits-wise, “Silver Wings” and “Okie from Muskogee” had been replaced by “The Bottle Let Me Down” and “Are the Good Times Really Over.” And, on both nights, Haggard has crooned a ditty called something like “Wish I Was Thirty Again,” which strikes a favorable chord in this corner.
At any rate, I’ll be missing the next two shows, but am greatly looking forward to the last stop of this tour, Saturday night at the Beacon. (Yea, I know three shows is kinda decadent, but tix went on sale the Tuesday morning after Hunter checked out, and it seemed to me then that it’s worth catching Dylan as many times as possible if given the opportunity. Two shows into this swing, I’m not regretting my decision at all.)
…Bob Dylan!
The Bob Dylan Show‘s freewheeling week in NYC began here last night at the Beacon Theatre, and it was a doozy. Bob’s got two opening acts this time around: First up was Amos Lee, a young guy who seemed pretty talented and exuded a sort of John Mayer/VH1-Storytellers vibe, and his three-piece band. Unfortunately, I arrived late and only caught the tail end of their set, but what I heard sounded pretty good.
Then came Merle Haggard and the Strangers, a well-traveled outfit (according to them, 40 years and running) with — as my friend Alex pointed out — the spitting image of Boris Yeltsin on the drums. Haggard & co. offered some old-school, easy-listening, toe-tappin’ country…I’m not a fan by any means, but I recognized some of the songs, including “Workin’ Man’s Blues,” “Okie from Muskogee,” and a cover of Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable.” (Well, it’s Merle Haggard…I wasn’t expecting “London Calling.”) And, despite some stage banter that sounded like it’d been in the can for a really long while (replete with rim-shots), the Strangers offered up a decent hour of countrified ditties that made for a solid, if somewhat quietening, kick-off to the Dylan set.
Finally, at around 9:30 or so, the man of the hour. Dylan’s show hasn’t changed all that much in the past couple of years, but he’s honed further his crack team of back-up musicians, and the stage design — red velvet curtains, a starry backdrop — has a choice David Lynch surreality to it this time around. Here’s the setlist:
To Be Alone With You /
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight /
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) /
Visions Of Johanna (listen here) /
Cold Irons Bound /
Moonlight /
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again /
High Water (For Charley Patton) (Listen here) /
Summer Days /
Standing In The Doorway /
Highway 61 Revisited /
Desolation Row
Encore: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues / All Along The Watchtower
Aside from the occasional harp solo at center stage (during “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and “Desolation Row,” for example), Dylan spent the evening on the keys. His voice is not it what once was, obviously, but I generally get over that by the first song or so — In fact, on some cuts, like “It’s Alright, Ma” or “Watchtower,” I actually find Dylan’s current raspy, menacing delivery an improvement.
For me, last night’s highlights were “Visions of Johanna” and “Desolation Row,” both of which remain two of Dylan’s most transcendent wordscapes. And the Hendrix-esque closer “All Along the Watchtower,” while not really a surprise, just keeps getting better and better — Bob’s now added a very eerie echo-effect to the last couplet (“Outside in the distance / A wildcat did growl / Two riders were approaching / The wind began to howwwwll…“) I’m very much looking forward to seeing how he’ll top that tonight.
Stella!
Last night, my sister and I went to go see the most recent revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, with Natasha Richardson as Blanche and John C. Reilly as Stanley. And, while I don’t claim to be an expert by any means — At the risk of looking like a rube, I’ll admit I went in with only vague impressions of the Brando-Leigh version, which I found had been interpolated, embarrassingly enough, with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — I quite enjoyed it.
At turns willowy and brittle, Richardson’s Blanche DuBois has, as Michael Stipe once put it, that “knowing with a wink that we expect from Southern women.” A pampered schemer whose delicate flower act obscures the grim realizations borne of an all-too-tragic life, Blanche is a fading memory of the Old South — She seems lost without a mint julep in hand and completely out-of-place in rough-and-tumble post-war New Orleans. I expect Richardson’s take on the role is probably slightly less sympathetic than in some other versions — no one deserves Blanche’s horrible fate; nevertheless, Richardson’s DuBois, so insufferable at times in the early going, does an exemplary job in Act 1 of proving Benjamin Franklin’s adage that “fish and visitors stink after three days.”
For his part, John C. Reilly is also memorable as the vindictive, animalistic Stanley (although nobody would argue, except perhaps Stanley himself, that this iteration of Kowalski has any of Brando’s physical magnetism.) Reilly’s Stanley is a hard-living working-class schlub who becomes increasingly more dangerous as the “Every Man a King” prerogatives he expects of domestic life are affronted by Blanche’s continued presence. Most of the time, he sits coiled like a snake, bottle in hand…but, when the moment strikes, Reilly lashes out with a feral fury that’s all the more frightening for being unexpected (he’s definitely not the type of guy you want in your poker game.) And, when Stanley finally gains the upper hand on his unwanted houseguest, his predatory instincts take hold in brutal and remorseless fashion.
At any rate, a good show. I can’t compare it to earlier iterations of Tennessee Williams’ play, but I can say that Richardson, Reilly, and the rest of the cast at the very least do Streetcar justice.
Nixed.
“Before the season, the Knicks were going to take New York back again. They were so sure of it…Now, [Isiah] Thomas simply stands in the tunnel between the locker room and the court, arms folded, watching this mess unfold night after night.” As another dismal season wheezes to a close, Adrian Wojnarowski sees no respite ahead for the Knickerbockers.
I can see my house from here…
To the consternation of some privacy advocates, Google unveils its funky new satellite map feature. I’m not too worried yet — the images are apparently between 6-12 months old…but wait, isn’t that Berk and I frolicing in Riverside Park? (Direct link via Supercres.) Update: In keeping with the meme (seen at Girlhacker), here’s home from above. This satellite image is at least a year old, as attested by the missing Columbia School for Social Work across the street — it’s been completed since last summer.
Et Tu, Denzel?
“This was the most unkindest cut of all; For when the noble Caesar saw him stab, Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms, Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart.” Denzel Washington’s Broadway turn as Brutus open to solid reviews. Between this Julius Caesar revival and Twelve Angry Men and Hurlyburly and the Richardson-Reilly Streetcar, among others, there are a lot of plays in town right now I wouldn’t mind catching at some point.
Rooms in New York.
“Even before he had established himself as a delineator of New York places, the artist had already pinpointed a New York state of mind. That state is not so much ‘loneliness,’ as the maudlin cliche about him would have it, but a tougher and more unsparing isolation that touches on the traps of modern urban existence, one in which individuals must become inured to life’s insults and injuries.” Art critic Avis Berman previews her new book on Edward Hopper’s New York for the Sunday Times.
Self-Ordained Professors’ Tongues.
An event of note last night here at Columbia’s Miller Theater: Music critic Greil Marcus, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, and Oxford poetry scholar Christopher Ricks came together to contemplate Dylania old and new. Marcus began by speaking on the many lives of “Masters of War,” including Dylan’s Gulf War I Grammy performance and the recent “Coalition of the Willing” episode at a Boulder, Colorado high school. Wilentz followed by discussing Dylan’s debts of gratitude (and debt to history) in the recent Chronicles. And Ricks punned his way through a priceless disquisition on Blonde on Blonde and the differences among poetry, prose, and song, finishing his remarks with a defense of “Just Like a Woman,” which apparently has been deemed misogynistic in certain academic corners. (I asked the panel about the mixed reception to Masked & Anonymous, and Wilentz & Marcus in particular praised it as an underrated film…I’ll probably have to see it again at some point.)
All in all, it was quite an interesting evening of Dylanology, although I must admit, I was a bit put off by some of Ricks’ comments in the Q&A session — He called “Masters of War” (and, for that matter, “The Death of Emmett Till“) self-absorbed and overly tendentious songs, which I think there’s a good deal of truth to, but then proceeded to castigate the audience for indulging its generally anti-Bush sentiment (via some mild chuckling) during Marcus’ Coalition of the Willing anecdote. Ricks began by deploring knee-jerk political responses in either direction as a typically American (and occasionally Dylanian) vice…ok, fine, that’s a criticism we’ve all heard before. “Fist fighting is here to stay,
It’s just the old American way.” But Ricks then went on to bemoan the tribulations faced by his poor right-wing friends in Massachusetts, who thought — correctly, in Ricks’ view — that “John Kerry didn’t deserve the presidency.” (As you might expect, this gave the smattering of right-leaning folk amid the audience a chance to clap vociferously and to indulge anew the currently-popular fallacy that they’re an oppressed minority.)
Yes, unfortunately, the decline of civility in debate and the “MacNeill-Lehrerization” of every issue into two opposite and irreconcilable poles are lamentable repercussions of the way politics is practiced today, as Jon Stewart famously noted on Crossfire several months ago. (Or, as Bob once put it, “Lies that life is black and white spoke from my skull…Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.“) But that doesn’t mean that Americans’ opinions of the war in Iraq aren’t well-thought out and hard-won. Ricks treated the issue as basically six-one, half-dozen-the-other, that to voice an opinion about the Iraq War is somehow irresponsible and — worse — uncouth. (Whatsmore, I had no idea what anybody’s politics were until Ricks began complaining about the presumed incivility in the room, at which point the audience immediately bifurcated into lefties and righties.) In sum, incivility is a serious problem, sure. But, for that matter, so is war.
The Q&A aside, though, the evening made for an eloquent appreciation of the many gifts of Bob Dylan, gifts further illuminated by the warmth and regard with which Marcus, Wilentz and Ricks held these songs to the light and uncovered some of their fragile tendrils of meaning and allusion. And if nothing else, the conference made for an excellent excuse to go home and delve into Bob’s back pages for the remainder of the evening, and listen to old songs with new ears.
The Roots Come Alive.
After the general post-election gloominess began to wear off near the end of last year (of course, it hasn’t completely subsided — at times, I think you can still see the cynicism emanating off me like little cartoon lines), I made it a resolution of sorts to start getting more involved in Dem organizing for this upcoming political cycle. So when some friends of mine (and founders of Concerts for Change) alerted me to their forum this evening on “Net Roots and the DNC,” which included A-list lefty bloggers Atrios and Afro-Netizen, former Dean director Zephyr Teachout, Personal Democracy Forum editor Micah Sifry, and NY Dem Party higher-ups Judith Hope and Mark Green, I very quickly decided to go check it out.
All in all, it made for a partial yet intriguing glimpse into the State of the Party 2005, and one I found at turns dispiriting and encouraging (and far more often the latter.) The panel itself was decently engaging, with most of the discussion centered around the imminent battle for DNC chair. (While there were a number of Simon Rosenberg buttons among the attendees, the panel seemed to split between Dean enthusiasts and DNC agnostics, who felt the upcoming election wasn’t of much import regardless of who wins.) There was also some discussion of the role left-leaning bloggers might play in helping to keep the media more attuned to right-wing spin jobs, but, alas, no one figured out how to square that circle just yet.
Former mayoral candidate and Nader Raider Mark Green, charismatic enough in that politico way, closed out the forum part of the evening with some clever but clearly canned remarks for the Young People into that Newfangled Technology stuff. (For example, he advised the crowd to “choose your mentors well,” which, c’mon now, is the same hoary advice Strom Thurmond gave 1000 of us at Boys’ State when I was 17 years old.) He also regaled us with a short US history lesson, which I’ll give him a B+ on — he was spot-on with George Washington plying his constituents-to-be with rum and George McGovern and direct mail, less so with the Lincoln the “real Log Cabin Republican” quip.)
As I said, I found some elements of the evening somewhat discouraging (and not just because I soon realized that my limited socializing skills at these sorts of things had further atrophied since entering academia.) For one, at times I felt the discussion seemed on the verge of degenerating into the worst kind of New Left-era identity politics, whereby the gender and ethnicity of the new DNC chair was somehow more important than his or her vision for the party. [This was driven home by a (white) fellow in the back hijacking the conversation at one point (does this sort of thing happen at GOP events? I always wonder) and loudly enumerating the few minorities in the room (By which he meant black people — Latinos and South Asians went under the radar), all to suggest that the event was somehow a charade and a farce for its lack of proportional representation.]
This is not to say that issues of gender and ethnicity aren’t central to our party’s core principles, or that the all-white-male slate for DNC chair isn’t a disappointment — to suggest otherwise would be imbecilic…even, dare I say it, Summers-esque. But, to my mind, it’s a question of focus. White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, male, female, straight, gay, or bisexual…we Dems just got our asses handed to us by the predominantly white male GOP. At a certain point — hopefully soon — we’re going to have to learn to deemphasize these differences among us and reemphasize our commonality as left-leaning citizens of the republic, rising up together against the corporate-sponsored avarice, imperial ambitions, and narrow-minded bigotry of today’s Republican Party. In other words and IMHO, rhetorically we need to start thinking 1933, and at times I heard way too much 1972 tonight.
(Also, and I know this is a goofy history-geek semantic distinction that I’ll just have to get over, but people kept throwing around ‘progressive’ when they meant ‘liberal.’ Not the same, y’all.)
All that being said, however, my general impression of the evening was quite favorable, mostly because of the energy, exuberance, and organizational acumen on display from the attendees. We may have lost the recent battle in 2004, but much of the online community-building infrastructure seems intact…and, indeed, seems to be here for the duration. I was reminded of the recent scholarship on the rise of the New Right (by Lisa McGirr, Rick Perlstein, and Matthew Dallek, among others), which ably demonstrates how conservatives, soundly defeated in 1964, managed to capture the California governorship only two years later, once Reagan had replaced Goldwater at the top of the movement. For now, the wheels are definitely churning at the grass-roots level…if we can just get the party machinery in order, find a standard-bearer willing to abandon the protective camouflage, and, most importantly, work on a way to articulate our democratic values against the corporate ministrations of the GOP, we might actually get somewhere.
If nothing else, it speaks volumes that conservative direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie is worried about what he sees from the online left — he’s a guy who knows a thing or two about political organizing, and how quickly the worm can turn. Matt Drudge and GWB, we’re coming for you.