Too Much of Nothing

Oh me oh my, oh mercy. Elvis has left the building! The final totals are in and it was a good week for Minnesota born singer/songwriters. Prince signed his record breaking deal and Bob Dylan sang 49 different songs in five nights to over 14,000 people (number of different people not available at press time).

HIGHLIGHTS: (and there were almost too many for one grinning fool to remember) Night 2's "Idiot Wind"- He sang the line "I couldn't believe after all this time, you didn’t know me any betttterrr than that..." with so much venom he drew blood. Night 5's "Every Grain of Sand”- that the following "Times are a Changin" got more applause than his inspired reading of this song means people are more into nostalgia than that which is eternal. Night 5's "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”- this is still his best “protest" song and when he delivered the punchline "...now-is the time for your tears" it nearly brought down the house. Night 4's "I Don’t Believe You" and Night 5's "I Believe in You" shows the range of emotion, depth, growth and amount of ground covered by one writer over thirty years. Nights 1,3,4,5's '"Boots of Spanish Leather”-this is one of my favorite songs of his he was so mesmerizing in each performance It brought me back to one who is now far away. Night 5's "Visions of Johanna- who would have thunk it? He sang the line which rhymes "freeze" "geez" and "knees” with phrasing which proves there may be more than one reason why Mona Lisa is smiling. Night 2 and Night 4's "Cats in the Well" and "Under the Red Sky"- two songs which belong in his rotating repertoire.

LOWLIGHTS: Night 1’s "Silvio”- sung with such indifference I was left to believe there is nothing "only dead men know." Night 2's "Stuck Inside a Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”- rambled, the band wasn’t together, and it all but fell apart, at the end. Night 3's "Gates cf Eden”- he skipped several verses and made an already monotone melody even more monotonous. Night 4's "All Along the Watchtower”- he performed this all five nights and it was pretty clear people respond more to the Hendrix version than the original. On this night be didn't even "howl" or "growl." Night 5's "Union Sundown”- it was nice to hear the song no matter how politically incorrect but he left out the best line, "I can see the day when even a home garden will be against the law."

IRONY: Each night the song that got the masses on their feet and dancing was “Unbelievable”- which contains the best line he has written in the 90’s: “It don’t matter no more what you've got to say, it's unbelievable it go down that way." If I understand the meaning of "irony" right, (and like another I may not) it seemed a bit ironic that people began bopping around on the song where Dylan was singing that, no one was listening to what he has to say anymore.

SEMI-AMUSING QUOTE HEARD FROM AN AUDIENCE MEMBER: "Hey, isn't that Donovan? (cleaning up the stage)"

MISC. NOTE: By the last night I vowed if I saw one more person doing the "funky chicken down the aisles of the Orpheum, I would go lodge an official protest at Macalester Colleqe- the place bad dancing is taught for credit.

A LIST OF SONGS PERFORMED (* In parentheses is the number of nights the song was played ) : Peggy-O (2), Don't Think Twice (1), Hard Rain(1) Blowin in the Wind (1), Girl from the North Country (1), Times are a Changin (4), Hollis Brown (1), Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (1) John Brown (1) , Boots of Spanish Leather (4), Little Moses (5), To Ramona (1), I Don't Believe You (1), It Ain’t Me Babe (4) , Mr . Tambourine Man (1), Maggie’s Farm (5), She Belongs to Me (1), Gates of Eden (1), Positively 4th Street (1),Ballad of the Thin Man (1), Highway 61 Revisited (5), It Takes a lot to Laugh It Takes a Train to Cry (1), Rainy Day Woman (2), Stuck Inside a Mobile (1), Just Like a Woman (2), Visions of Johanna (1), I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight (1), All Along the Watchtower (5), To Be Alone with You (1), Watching the River Flow (1), If Not For You (l), Tangled Up in Blue (2), Idiot Wind (1), Shelter From the Storm (1), Simple Twist of Fate (3) I Believe in You (1), Lenny Bruce (1), Every Grain of Sand (1), I and I (1), Union Sundown (1), I'll Remember You (1), Silvio (3), Man in the Long Black Coat (3), What Good Am I? (2), Everything is Broken (2), Under the Red Sky (1), Cats in the Well (1), Unbelievable (4)