Concert Review Number 11: Bob Dylan, St. Louis October 22, 2007

Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Amos Lee
The Fox Theatre



Sooooo...my second $180.00 concert ticket in three days. Who is a millionaire genius? Not me...on either count. There was a chance my wife would eventual start to speak to me again after I paid this much for a concert ticket...several times... but that chance has been...frittered away. Heading out to the Fox on what seems like the first day of winter. I was looking forward to the Fox after having suffered the indignities of U.S. Cellular Coliseum in Bloomington. I was also looking forward to (in no particular order) seeing the hot Elvis Costello set and getting home and being in bed by 11. Such is the life of the sad pathetic 46 year old man.

I have made a strategic decision to Miss the Amos Lee set. As I stated he was deemed non-essential. This is the second harshest epithet I could dump on him but on more careful reflection he is entitled to the number one unkindest thing I could say about ANY live rock show. He was...pleasant. There is nothing more unforgivable in rock then being pleasant. Save it for the Holiday Inn Lounge my friend where people can talk over your set and enjoy a tequila sunrise. Of course that is just my opinion.

We arrive at the Fox and it has been a while since I have been there. I do not remember who I saw there last but every show is an experience just because it is such an impressive venue. It is gaudy and beautiful at the same time with over worked detail in every nook and cranny. there is no plain space in the building and from the moment you walk in... it is just wow. it is also nice because even though it is a pretty venue with nice padded theatre seats you can take e your cocktail to your seat.
We were in row E in the center in front of the stage. Unfortunately it is not the fifth row because the orchestra pit is full of folding chairs. The crowd is an older crowd but full of regular people. I see a few people I know as well as Steve Pick, music critic and Euclid Records clerk...very good guy. It was a fairly mellow vibe when we walked in on the end of Amos Lee’s set. We found our way to our seats and evicted some people who were supposed to be on the other side.

After seeing the show the other night I was really looking forward to Costello. From reading prior reviews I knew that the set, the jokes and the stage patter did not vary a great deal. It didn't. He started off with “Angels Want To Wear My Red Shoes” and other then mixing the order up (slightly) he stayed with the same set i had heard a few nights before. The strange thing was that he was still kind of hypnotic and compelling for me. Once again...I just like to hear the guy sing. He is a weak guitar player but plays well enough to accompany his voice.

He tried to lead a sing along again tonight just like he did in Bloomington on the song “Wake Me Up”. It was a little of a reach there and was a big reach at the Fox in St. Louis. I have seen a lot of bands do this more or less successfully but it is really best done in the intimacy of a bar with a lot of beer involved. It was hard in the Arena atmosphere in Bloomington and was really disconnected in the padded seat theatre of the Fox.

Nothing made his set stand out from the other night. He made references to T-Bone Burnette and Henry Coward (the same person) as writing partners, told the same Schwartzenegger joke and talked faux nervously about his American born kids needing to be in a war. With “Radio Sweetheart” he broke into the Jackie Wilson song “Let It All Hang Out” and attempted another failed sing along but it did not seem to bother him.

He closed once again with “Peace love and Understanding” and a new song I think that was called “Willow From The Rye” which was an anti war song from the point of view of a mother speaking to the country’s leaders since she had lost her son to the war. It was a quality sad, pretty song containing the poignant line “Admit you lied and bring the boys back home.”
Pretty good stuff... then after a short break Dylan came out, just as he had the night before. The thing is... I had just seen him a few days before and he was not that great then. The bad was dressed in leather suits and bowler hats. Dylan was dressed like Dylan still with the big hat and sadly...he still could not really sing. The good news/bad news was that he played a dramatically different set list. That is impressive on a number of different levels:

1. His band can play anything and they could wing almost anything he wanted to play.
2. Dylan has some respect for his craft and his audience and is not mailing it in.
3. He remembers the words to songs like “Visions of Johanna.” (no one else does)

So we got that going for us. Danny on guitar was awesome again and it was not quite the same Soulard Blues Band feel that we had in Bloomington. He also did not play my favorite song “Tangled Up In Blue” so I did not have to suffer through it. he opened with “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” which is a classic and went into “It Ain’t Me Babe” which... is a classic. Those classics are from almost 40 years ago. Then he hit some new classics. “Sick of Love” and the still timely “Levees Gonna Break: which he had also performed two nights before and really got the band and the crowd rocking. There was sweet pedal steel guitar through most of the show and it just swung and twanged a little better then the the night before.

“Visions of Johanna”....”Things Have Changed”...”Nadine”...on and on. A little numbing. When I say he cannot sing I do actually mean it. Some people love his voice from when used to be able to sing (me) and some-people think he never could. Now however he really has no lung capacity so every delivery is breathy and forced, jamming words into too small a places and ruining the flow and timing. Still...he is Dylan and on this night Costello came out to join him for a few encores and well...you just do not get to see two members of the holy (little h) trinity sharing a mike for the night.

Anyway... I think I am done seeing that nice Bob Dylan. I am happy I got to see him several times... once with my oldest son and I needed to see him a few times before he croaked. Unlike some of my music snob friends I will miss Dylan...it has been nice to have him croaking around for the last 45 years or so. That is a long ass time. So we got that going for us. Danny on guitar was awesome again and it was not quite the same Soulard Blues Band feel that we had in Bloomington. He also did not play my favorite song “Tangled Up In Blue” so I did not have to suffer through it. he opened with “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” which is a classic and went into “It Ain’t Me Babe” which... is a classic. Those classics are from almost 40 years ago. Then he hit some new classics. “Sick of Love” and the still timely “Levees Gonna Break: which he had also performed two nights before and really got the band and the crowd rocking. There was sweet pedal steel guitar through most of the show and it just swung and twanged a little better then the the night before.

“Visions of Johanna”....”Things Have Changed”...”Nadine”...on and on. A little numbing. When I say he cannot sing I do actually mean it. Some people love his voice from when used to be able to sing (me) and some-people think he never could. Now however he really has no lung capacity so every delivery is breathy and forced, jamming words into too small a places and ruining the flow and timing. Still...he is Dylan and on this night Costello came out to join him for a few encores and well...you just do not get to see two members of the holy (little h) trinity sharing a mike for the night.

Anyway... I think I am done seeing that nice Bob Dylan. I am happy I got to see him several times... once with my oldest son and I needed to see him a few times before he croaked. Unlike some of my music snob friends I will miss Dylan...it has been nice to have him croaking around for the last 45 years or so. That is a long ass time.

Concert Review Number 10: Bob Dylan, Bloomington Illinois October 20, 2007

Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Amos Lee
U.S. Cellular Coliseum
Bloomington Illinois
October 20th, 2007

As you read yesterday and I have explained several times... I am an idiot. Do to my genius I was in possession of two tickets to see this show in Bloomington. There were only three problems with that:

1. The tickets cost 180 bucks each;
2. Bloomington is 160 Miles from downtown St. Louis
3. I also have expensive tickets to see the same show at the Fox on october 22.

Those are three fairly large problems. I have the tickets, I did not get my act together to sell them on line (because i do not know how and because I no longer have an associate working for me (JD Luhning) to whom I can assign the task. The cost of the tickets is of course a sunk cost. I need to decide whether I want to drive 2 1/2 hours and sit through a show I will see 48 hours later. Not being too bright I decided to do so.

The drive north to Bloomington (Illinois, not Indiana) is a painful one up 55 a little over 1/2 way to Chicago. It is flat and windy and has high spots like Benld (look it up) and Funks Grove (not China Grove). I left town at 4 and was comfortably in my 10th row seat to see Amos Lee. Amos Lee had a competent bad and was unremarkable. He will not be having a major recording career despite this show case. Do not worry about him. he came on at 7 and was off at 7:35. A little about the venue. U.S. Cellular Coliseum is about like the Family Arena in St. Charles. Wikipida says:

“U.S. Cellular Coliseum is an arena in downtown Bloomington, Illinois that opened to the public on April 1, 2006. It is on the southwest corner of Madison Street (US-51) and Front Street. It hosts the Bloomington Extreme indoor football team of United Indoor Football and the Bloomington Prairie Thunder of the International Hockey League. The arena's seating capacity is approximately 7,000 for hockey and indoor football games.

Mayor Judy Markowitz, who had championed the project, cast the deciding vote when the City Council was deadlocked at 4-4 on a resolution to initiate its construction.[1] Following the Council vote, a non-binding referendum asking if public funds should be used to build the arena failed by 2/3 of the vote.[2] Even so, the arena was still built.
Currently, the City of Bloomington is searching for ways to fill the budget deficit it faces, due to the facility's operating losses projected to top $1.6 million for this calendar year. Proposals include scaling back public infrastructure repair projects and eliminating staff in order to avoid a tax raise.” Well put.

The Place is a dump. But I am in the 10th row wand am seated in a reasonably padded folding chair. At 7:55 the lights dim and Elvis Costello walks out with an acoustic guitar. He is nattily dressed in a suit and looks a little chunky. He also is kind of charming in his ineffable British way and he kicks off with “Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes”, “Radio Sweetheart” and “Alison” and... well... he just sounds great. No band and only an average guitarist (that might be generous) he just relies on that voice that no one gives him enough credit for. he rattles off Alison and leads some sing alongs. Announces it is his dad’s birthday but there is no place he would rather be and then goes into a several song anti war rant. It was some good stuff and capped with “Whats So Funny About Peace love and Understanding?” Indeed.Since he is not a great guitar player he had a large effects array peddled before him and sometimes the volume of the guitar slightly overwhelmed his always strong voice.

We have another break and I try...ineffectively to go to the bathroom. There are approximately twice as many girls rooms as boys rooms. I am treated to the rare sight of no lines in the ladies rooms and thirty men lines up outside the door of the mens room. Did I mention that the place was a dump. I went back to my seat with a full beer and a full bladder. Seeing Dylan is problematic and not always pleasing. he is not a young man and he is at best an eclectic artist. he has toured relentlessly over the last ten years and put out 7 albums during that time and two of them were pretty good. But the shows are not problematic because of the material but just because of his voice. But still... it is Bob freaking Dylan. he came out dressed in his typical cowboy hat which is circa Rolling Thunder Review” from 72 or so. He started with his guitar and ripped through a couple including “Tangled Up In Blue” which were just...to my ears. Awful. he was raspy and seemed to be belching the words out in a machine gun pace to keep up with the song and it is one of my favorites and I just thought... maybe he should not sing pretty songs anymore.

But...as an idiot I am often wrong and this was one of those case. He left center stage and went behind his organ for Tangled and never cam back out and as it went on...he got better and better and stronger and stronger. Really good stuff. Ripping through older songs as well as newer stuff. The set list was very diverse and from looking at earlier reviews he is not holding onto a solid set list. His band was incredibly tight. My only complaint was that they really went to the bar blues of “Modern Times” as much as anything and although it swung nicely... if I never heard a blues riff again my life would be none the poorer. Still....”Highway 61 as a blues rant with a real hot blues guitarist is a treat and Dylan’s voice hit every note hard. The band was tight and his lead guitar Denny Freeman is just awesome to watch and hear. For more on him take a look at Brad Bucholz blog:

http://bobdylantour2007.blogspot.com/2007_09_21_archive.html

Dylan’s ability to find great guitarists to take out on the road with him whether it was the singer songwriter Robbie Robertson and the band or the brilliant T-Bone Burnette he has a knack. Dylan’s two hour set coincided nicely with Costello’s anti war rant and he finished predictably with a nice version of “Masters of War” The Bloomington crowd was able to find their way out of the place... and tired and a little sleepy.... I took a long drive home and anticipated Monday night at the Fox.

http://stldinerreview.blogspot.com/

TicketMONSTER

OK....soooooo.... as we have discussed in the past I am... of course... an idiot. They announced that Bob Dylan was coming to town the 22nd of October WITH Elvis Costello. I do not know from day to day who I like better but along with Neil Young those three make up the Mike Becker Rock and Roll Trinity. So my birthday is on the tenth and I am at work on Saturday and I think “daddy is going to splurge for some expensive tickets.” Why do I need expensive tickets?

Well if you have not been in another time zone this week and you can read and or listen to the news then you now know (because prior to this event I did not know) about the Hannah Montana craze. Evidently she is Billy Ray Cyrus daughter (in what universe can this be considered a good thing? I have never seen the girl but assume she must have back hair.) and is a Disney TV star and is evidently the next big thing. So it is generally not a big deal that in reserved seat concerts (most of the bands I see and venues I go to are general admission) you simply cannot get good seats. I used to blame ticket master (and certainly that is an evil empire that must be destroyed) but they were just a pre-cursor of where we are now. You see formerly with Ticketmaster and now in all reserved seat shows you can get on line or get on the phone, have your credit card ready and at the moment the tickets go on same buy “best available” and find that 1 minute after tickets went on sale you are in the 45th row on the far right. Lining up at the venues ticket window is even more stupider (I love more stupider). The venues are hooked up to the same computers as the ticketmaster people. But where did the tickets go? When you went to the show they were always filled. often with very well dressed middle aged guys and their younger girlfriends. They were “pre-sold” to special clients...for a premium. So, I could never get good tickets.

And neither could anyone else. But really...who cares? There cannot be more then like a 1000 live music junkies in any given has been dying downtown (no matter what anyone sells to you) midwestern city and 80% of those guys don’t vote... or have girlfriends...or jobs and their voices, even if unified cannot be heard that loudly from the muffled, well insulated subterranean bastion of their parents’ basements. So we were ripe for abuse and abuse we received and no one cared when they were just abusing us. But the Ticketmaster model worked too well. Venues and artists took notice and in the name of the true fan they took action...to get those profits themselves. And they have done really well mastering the model. The venue has “special” friends of the venue who pay a premium for the shot at these tics and the artists have their fan club web sites where...they just want to help.

So no one really cared until Hannah Montana. This teen superstar had a base of pre adolescent young ladies who NEEDED those tickets and every lousy suburban mother and father, trying to buy their children everything their little blond heads might desire NEEDED these tickets. “What if the neighbor girl got to go and our Brittany didn’t?” Disaster! I can see boob jobbed housewives telling their husbands with their words, eyes and body language that daddy better score some tickets. What can a man do under that kind of pressure? Stand in line? Call ticketmaster? Go on line with ticketmaster? No, no and once again...no. None of those places had tickets. No normal vendor had tickets because the ticket-brokers had learned how to game the system with their computers and their shills so that whenever the tickets went on sale...none really went on sale. They flooded the computer with a Million ticket requests for 15,000 seats against the requests of 45,000 people who want the tickets what happens? you do the math. And these tickets turn up quickly on Stub Hub. Right now for this show: Hanna Montana / Miley Cyrus - Best of Both Worlds Tickets 11/7, you can buy tickets for $9,630.00. Each. Nice.

They have tried all kinds of things including allotting tickets for real fans and putting them on sale where the buyer has to come pick them up but not much has worked. Real fans do not matter. Cash matters. So in this unhappy circumstance I decided I was going to acquire some expensive tickets and got on the Dylan web site and popping and clicking and pressing and reading through all the BS I thought I had purchased two tickets for the Fox on October 22nd for 180 bucks each. Pricey indeed. I immediately got a notice saying my card was being dinged for $760.00. When tried to rescind the transaction I was told ALL sales were final. I figured I had somehow clicked for 4 tickets and perhaps I could find some clients to take and have the firm pick up part of the cost.

But... 10 days before the show I received a little box containing two tickets, two pocket watches and some beautiful lanyards with hard plastic passes which made very clear they were not backstage passes and provided no special access or anything. The pocket watches looked like they might bring 5 bucks each in a pawn shop. I think these special tchotkes are the rationalization for the high price. They just make me feel like more of a prostitutes “john”. My wife solved the riddle about why I only had two when she said “these tickets are for October 20th”, which caused me to ask “are they even for St. Louis” and she said...”no...they are for Bloomington Illinois.” I still do not know how I did it but it has permanently soured me on expensive tickets. Some people like myself are not meant to live well. The good news.... two Dylan Concert reviews.