The Bob Dylan Show

I took a break last night from sitting around wetting my pants in anticipation of Monday night, long enough to go the Pantages with my dad for The Bob Dylan Show. The opening act was Amos Lee. He's signed to Blue Note Records (home to Norah Jones) and the comparisons to her are pretty accurate. He's got a voice very similar to that of the Train lead singer and musically, he fuses jazz, blues, folk and a little bit of country into a very cool sound. He's sort of in the same category as Jack Johnson and John Meyer. I REALLY liked him.

Next on the bill was Merle Haggard. Yup. I sat through 50 minutes of redneck country. Amazingly, though, it was probably the highlight of the evening. Merle is a very good song writer. He had some sweet war protest songs back in the day and he has a new one called "That's the news" which was pretty cool. He also covered Nat King Cole's Unforgettable and apparently it's on a new standards album he's put out, ala Willie Nelson's Stardust album.

Don't get me wrong, here, I love Dylan. It is amazing just to be in his presence. He IS the history of Rock and Roll (along with a few others of course). I've now seen him perform four times, all with my dad, and this was probably only the third best show. The first time I saw him has to rank on top, simply for senimental reasons. Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison opened for him and I got to taste a true slice of American Music History. Next would be when we saw him at the Grove in Anaheim. We were much closer to him and could be a much better part of the concert. The worst was the show with Paul Simon at the Pond. Our seats were terrible (at the back of the floor) the sound was terrible and it was just a miserable experience compared with the other three.

Last night was very interesting, to say the least. Dylan diverted greatly from his standard set list that he's used on the 12 previous shows on this tour and the songs he chose were new to me and some, new to my dad, who's been a Dylan fan since he was an 18-year old draft-eligible hippie. Dylan hid behind his piano for the entire 14-song set, with a perfectly good acoustic guitar sitting right next to him. Dylan was also very distant. His only interaction with the crowd was saying thank you towards the end of the regular set and introducing the band. He played five or so songs off the newest album, Love and Theft (A fantastic piece of music). But he left out Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, probably the biggest "hit" off the album, for the first time of the tour. With a 40-album (400+ song) catalog, it's hard to hear all of your favorites, but the ones we did get were all "alternate" versions. I understand the need for him to do this after 40 years, but I would have loved to hear an original version of All Along the Watchtower, his closing song. For years when he's been performing this song it's been Dylan-Doing-Hendrix-Doing-Dylan. On this night he took it a step further and was almost doing an out-of-body imitation of himself. Very Strange.

It wasn't terrible by any means, It just wasn't as great as I expected. The band was awesome. His fiddler is INCREDIBLE. The musicianship has never been at a higher level. Most of the songs were well known, and appreciated. I enjoyed hearing classics such as Mr. Tamborine Man, Forever Young and Highway 61 Revisited, even if they weren't in their original forms. If nothing else, it set me up for an even better concert experience on Monday night!

AND, we got a great dinner, too. I've always wanted to go to The Stinking Rose, a garlic restaurant on Restaurant Row in Beverly Hills. It's across the street from where Ed Debevics (RIP) was once housed. We had this appetizer spread for their garlic rolls, which was basically full garlic cloves bathed in olive oil. Then I had a neon ravioli pasta dish, stuffed with cheese, garlic, potato and carmelized onions, topped with a creamy basil sauce. Then for dessert, Garlic Ice Cream.