HOW DOES IT FEEEEEEL???

Bob Dylan
August 12, 2008
Prospect Park
Brooklyn

The cheapest tickets for the show were something like $75--well over the amount at which I cap myself for purchasing concert tickets. And besides my personal exercises in fiscal discipline, I have a certain populist leaning that says that rock shows should be for the kids and that it's somehow wrong to charge an amount that only the wealthy can afford. Fine, the guy's a legend, one of the true godheads of American music, but this is rock n' roll and that should mean something, dammit.

All of this is by way of saying that although I did not purchase a ticket in advance to this sold out show I showed up anyway. I am a proponent of the "where there's a will there's a way" philosophy when it comes to these things, which usually turns out to be true. Well, not in this case. I think the dearth of tickets being sold outside the show, a fairly ubiquitous happening at just about any other show, stems from the older, economically comfortable demographic of the crowd. If people ended up with an extra ticket they probably were more likely to absorb the cost than to degrade themselves by scalping it outside.

The shame of spending the concert outside the 10-foot tall gates that had been diabolically erected around the outdoor bandshell to prevent the ticketless scum like me from sneaking a peak at ole' Bobby D was sublimated by the general righteousness of the situation. Here I was, among the orphans and vagabonds hovered outside the barricades trying to intercept whatever spare notes could waft through the sound-deflecting barriers while the fat cats sat comfortably inside with their plastic cups full of wine and their khaki pants and grey old-people hair. I mean, WE WERE BOB'S PEOPLE! You know, the ones from the songs and stuff. Well, that line of thinking made staring at the gates more palatable anyway stealing a few notes of "Rainy Day Woman" or "Lay Lady Lay." I could hear the people inside singing along to "Blowin' In the Wind" and they sounded dumb. Us real folk, and there were a ton of people outside who remained through the whole concert, danced and climbed trees to get a better overlook. Next time Dylan comes around and I decide to buy tickets, I guess I better take my diamond ring and pawn it, baby.

Photos where in you can enjoy Bob Dylan's awesome choice of performing attire, which causes him to look like an Amish pimp--a brilliant look if one ever existed.

New York Times review of the show

Jesse Jarnow's awesome review for the Voice

Artists in attendance: Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, whose band, Yo La Tengo recently contributed to the I'm Not There soundtrack with "Fourth Time Around" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover."

Related: I was listening to the Yo La Tengo version of "Fourth Time Around" with a friend who pointed out that it sounded like YLT were ripping off the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood." I immediately swooped in to correct him that in fact it was a cover of a Bob Dylan song and that more likely the Beatles had ripped off Dylan. Once the embers of my ego calmed down (inflamed in part because, hey, how come I had never noticed the melodic similarity between the 2 classics?) I ventured to actually double-check my ill-informed assertion. To my dismay, "Norwegian Wood" had been released in on the Beatles' 1965 album, Rubber Soul, while "Fourth Time Around" came out the very next year on 1966's Blonde On Blonde. But the similarity was uncanny so I googled them both at once and in one of the most satisfying Internet searches I've ever conducted, a full explanation unfolded courtesy of wikipedia:

"Norwegian Wood" was considered an artistic leap for Lennon, as it was his earliest story-song and showed an obvious Dylan-influence. "4th Time Around" has been seen as either a playful homage, or a satirical warning to Lennon about co-opting Dylan's well-known songwriting devices. Lennon himself felt it to be a somewhat pointed parody of "Norwegian Wood". Lennon later told his biographer that he considered Dylan's effort to be more a playful homage. Still, the last line of "4th Time Around" can be interpreted as more bitter than playful: "I never asked for your crutch./ Now don't ask for mine." In the context of the Dylan-Lennon rivalry, this line can be interpreted as Dylan warning Lennon not to use Dylan's songs as a "crutch" for Lennon's songwriting.

This is probably old news for the well-informed Chocco Salo readership, but figured I'd share, just in case.

Download: a live version of Yo La Tengo covering "I Wanna Be Your Lover" with Chris Stamey sitting in from December 6, 2007, Night 3 of their recent Channukah run at Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ.